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Day of atonement 





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DAY OF 
ATONEMENT 


BOOKS BY LOUIS GOLDING 
FICTION 
FORWARD FROM BABYLON 
SEACOAST OF BOHEMIA 
VERSE 
SORROWS OF WAR 
SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME 
PROPHET AND FOOL 
BELLES LETTRES 
SUNWARD, BEING ADVENTURES IN ITALY 
SICILIAN NOON (Jn preparation) 





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COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY LOUIS GOLDING 


PUBLISHED, MAY, 1925 


MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


FOR 
JOHN LEWIS PATON 
HERO OF MY BOYHOOD 
AND MY MANHOOD NOT LESS 
MY FRIEND ALWAYS 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https ://archive.org/details/dayofatonementOOgold 


CONTENTS 


PROLOGUE IN SICILY 3 
PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 19 
DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 113 


EPILOGUE IN SICILY 269 















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PROLOGUE IN SICILY 





PROTOG UE GUNS EC il Eay 


ERHAPS [| could not elsewhere in the world have en- 
IP visioned so clearly as here the sorrowful ceremonial 

of the Day of Atonement. Below me, timeless 
and tideless, extended the African sea. Over me, arrested 
in mid-heaven he seemed, paused the Sicilian sun. The 
grey spikes of the agave transfixed the breathless October 
air that hung down over them and did not move. Un- 
couth, top-heavy cactus proliferated among the founda- 
tions of the Greek temples. Agave and cactus seemed a 
vegetation which had been old when the first anemones 
made purple the first spring. They would be young on 
the last winter, when there was sustenance for no plant 
else. So, too, you could not conceive that these tumbled 
marble drums had ever been whitely piled upon each 
other, supporting architrave and pediment. Here seemed 
the true immortality of Hellas, not in any anxious read- 
justment of fallen columns, or sedulous marking out of 
pronaos and cella. 

So that time had ceased, time was eliminated from the 
grave perpetuity of this background. Greece being the 
essential condition of things, any other fancy or associa- 
tion might with the greater ease detach itself from the 
mind and play any ghostly part it chose against this sea, 
this grass, these Greek temples older than Greece, older 
than the world. 

Urgently the memory of the little Jewish synagogue in 


3 


DAYOOPR VATLOWN EME Nal) 


Doomington with which I was so familiar in my boyhood 
knocked upon my brain, the more urgently as it was rather 
an accident than a zealous retention of the date in my 
mind which had conveyed to me the information that this 
day, the twelfth of October, was the Day of Atonement, 
the supreme day in the Jewish Calendar. 

I had had no particular reason to inquire that morning 
for letters at the post-office in Pietrafalco. I had hardly 
expected to arrive here for some days yet. And least of 
all could I imagine that my Aunt Deborah (my only sur- 
viving relative in Doomington, for the others were all dead 
or had migrated to America) should suddenly bethink her- 
self of my existence, having washed her hands of me—so 
she said firmly—more than ten years ago. 

Wherever thou mayst be (she had written in her dis- 
jointed Yiddish script) for the sake of thy father and 
mother, peace be upon them, remember that in Tisri, upon 
the tenth day, is the Day of Atonement, upon which no 
Jew, however far he has wandered, does not return to the 


heart of his people and the dwelling-place of God. I 


would ask thee to give a thought to this for the sake of the 
dead ones so much as for thine own. Who else shall re- 


| member them? Return for some moments from the wil- 


derness. Flee from the scapegoat, from Azazel. Be at 
one with us. 

Thou mayst have forgotten the way of reckoning, thou, 
thy father’s son. October then, upon the twelfth day. 
Thou wilt be perhaps at that time in some city with a 
synagogue? God grant it! 

The letter had been forwarded to me from Trapani 
where there was a ghetto indeed, but I do not think my 
Aunt Deborah would have felt at home there, with oleo- 
graphs of San Giuseppe and the Madonna of Trapani in 


4 


EER OULO CCIE MENG SU GULLY. 


every window, and candles before their images in every 
dark kitchen. 

I had made my way into a synagogue, not such as she 
had conceived, nor out of disrespect to her and her injunc- 
tions. Nor could I associate with Azazel, the lovely fawn 
goats that grazed among the ruins here, with royal antlers 
and long hair fine as silk. From the first moment I had 
entered through the old peasant-woman’s plantation of 
almonds, I had not been unaware of the goat-herd stand- 
ing in the corner made by a bronze-burnished carob-tree 
and an extremity of the loose-stone wall. He seemed a 
part of this ageless furniture, as if he grew like the as- 
phodel or the agave. Tall and strong he stood, as a 
cypress, and as silent. I could not see his face, nor did 
I desire to. The hood of his thick, blue cape was drawn 
down despite the rigid heat of the day, across his forehead. 
He did not impede the course of that dolorous pageantry 
that passed and passed again about the Holy Ark in the 
remote, tiny synagogue of Doomington. Ghosts clapping 
their hands together in contrition for a year’s sins and 
making no noise, ghosts beating their breasts and weeping, 
but shedding no tears, ghost of Jehovah bending down to 
listen. His beard is a forest of dumb, racked pines. 
Ghosts of the old women behind their partition beating 
their breasts also, but what sin shall such frail flesh har- 
bour? Ghosts of little boys simulating dreadful grief for 
the delectation of their elders, winking at each other hard 
and pulling tongues under the shelter of their praying- 
shawls. Ghost of the little boy that was myself adjusting 
about my forehead the blue-and-white silk of my own 
praying-shawl. Its fringes hang in the tepid air. 

Sicilian goat-herd adjusting his praying-shawl also—for 
was not this the Day of Atonement? So do the holy men, 

5 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


the cohenim, stand before the sanctuary, tall and austere, 
in direct communion with God. He slipped the cape from 
his head, his first movement since I had come among the 
ruins. ‘The ghosts scurried away, troubled and pitiful. 

He was turned from the sun and I towards it. Goat- 
herd of Sicily, immemorial pagan, and Greece about my 
feet. He it was and none other I had incorporated into 
the ghetto gloom of Doomington. I laughed, throwing 
back my head. But my laughter had not ceased before I 
heard him speak. “Shalom Aleichem, Jew!” he said. 

My first emotion was not surprise, for it could not have 
been adequate to this fantasy, this paradox. It was my 
Aunt Deborah who rose concrete, and somewhat forbid- 
ding, in the central space of my brain. 

“I told you, Auntie, I told you!” I said virtuously. 
Something of the self-righteous little boy I had been and 
had evoked a moment ago clung about me. “TI told you 
you could rely on me to go to the synagogue if I could 
manage it. Not that I’ve managed it quite, dear Auntie, 
but one Jew, and another, and another—and you have ten 
before you know where you are; a minyon that is to say!” 

“Thou still rememberest that without ten Jews, adults, 
no service shall be held?” 

“Should I forget, Auntie?” I asked her reproachfully. 
She moved away, her black jet beads dangling from her 
bonnet, and her cape swishing with sequins. She retired 
to the women’s section of the synagogue, behind the parti- 
tion there. She had recognized just as clearly as I that 
those Hebrew syllables, pronounced in that intonation and 
no other, with that precise guttural, had passed from no 
other than Jewish lips. 

“Shalom Aleichem, Jew! Peace be upon you!” 

“Aleichem Shalom! Upon you peace!” 


PROLOGUE EN ST ORLY 


So it was that I met Reuben, the son of Eli, my fellow- 
townsman from Doomington, among the Greek ruins by 
the African sea. So it was that I learned the story of Eli, 
his father, and his mother, Leah. For theirs is the tale I 
must tell, as I learned it under the canopy of vines that 
is the threshold to Reuben’s hut, this Jewish goat-herd of 
Sicily, who was no Jew. Whilst his half-naked children 
ran like slim ghosts among the roots of his olives, or 
stumbled, and sprang to their feet again like does; and his 
woman, her dark eyes blossoming into flame, as she might 
be a meznad out of Thessaly, set before us a cruse of 
volcanic wine, pressed under Etna’s shadow. 

No, I cannot define what caprice, instinct, destiny it 
was that impelled him thus for one moment, one day, to 
build up the bridge of race he had hacked down thirty 
years ago. Was it something more grandiose than ca- 
price, so grim as destiny? If it was something deeper 
than the first, a sudden overpowering urgency of his blood, 
it is hard to imagine it would not have asserted itself years 
ago, and more than once, before he had thus irrevocably 
cut himself off from all that had nurtured him and me. 
Yet, though I do not like to play too lightly with the 
thought that the consciousness of this day’s significance 
had transmitted itself to him across the medium of this 
curiously sensitive air, this dead womb of air waiting to be 
quickened—yet, looking back upon his story, I sometimes 
find it not difficult to imagine his veins and nerves respon- 
sive in some subtle rebellious manner to the sense of the 
day introduced by me; for the Day of Atonement had 
once played so prepotent a part in his history, that it 
might be called either its climax or its beginning. 

In what language—this was my first thought when my 
heart had ceased pounding against my ribs—in what lan- 


E 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


guage should conversation between this novel goat-herd 
and myself proceed, if it was to proceed at all? We had 
changed our positions in relation to the sun, and the hood 
of his cape lying back over his shoulder, I could now see 
his face clearly. I should hardly have looked at it a 
second time had I met the man riding on his donkey down 
from the gates of Pietrafalco. His face was swarthy with 
the sun, his hair long and coarse. I should have thought 
him a Sicilian of the Sicilians, though leaner than many of 
his countrymen. A harsh thought struck me. He was no 
more—that was it—than some returned potato-seller from 
Buenos Ayres or factory-hand from Pittsburgh. He had 
picked up a phrase or two of Hebrew, and several more of 
Yiddish, from the Jews he had knocked about with there. 
Sandwiching phrases like these between his nasal, hyper- 
vowellous English, with what futility would he not at once 
lacerate the morning! Having recognized me as Jew and 
Englishman, . . 

He spoke, and in English. But there was no more trace 
of America in his accent than of Siam. He brought out 
the words slowly, somewhat laboriously, as if feeling his 
way with them. Was I wrong in detecting the flattened 
u’s and a’s of the North Country? or did I only endow his 
speech with them later, when his tale moved from Russia 
into Doomington? 

“TI haven’t seen a Jew, at least an English Jew, in these 
parts for many years. You are English?” 

“You are right,” I said, “I am a Jew from England. 
But you must let me say how disappointed Iam. I was 
going to bring out my best Sicilian for your benefit. For- 
give me if I can’t take this as quietly as you. My head’s 
buzzing so loudly that I can’t hear myself speak. Is all 
this a joke:” I pointed to his blue cape, to his shoes. 


PROTO GU EeUNES T CO Iny 


They were two simple, oblong strips of goatskin, softened 
by water and wear and bound with thongs about his 
ankles. An umbrella stood behind him, leaning upon the 
smoky'trunk of the carob. It was such as all the peasants 
use here against storm or sun, its central piece made from 
a branch of fig, smoked at the handle, and its ribs curved 
twigs from a lemon-tree. “Ts all this a joke?” I asked. 

“A joke?” he repeated. Then he was silent for two 
minutes or three. He looked into my eyes with a dis- 
quieting intentness. ‘Then he shook his head from side 
to side slowly several times, and turned away from me. 

“I’m sorry!” I exclaimed. “You greet me in excellent 
Hebrew. You continue with excellent English. Are you 
a goat-herd from Sicily? Are you a Jewish eccentric from 
England? I don’t want to force you to speak. But it 
was yourself, wasn’t it, who forced words upon me and out 
of me? I don’t know what to make of it!” 

He bent down towards a coil of rope flung about a 
marble fragment at his feet. Its other end was tied to a 
ring in the leather collar of a he-goat grazing the poor 
herbage about us. A small bell tinkled from behind the 
goat’s beard. 

“There’s some richer stuff,” he said, “in that old quarry 
there. The sun does not get it all day and all year long. 
I must wish you good-day.” 

I could not allow this fantastic creature to slip from me 
so hopelessly. I could not. He had already wantonly 
broken the mood that the memories of this day, curiously 
made by this setting so much the more vivid and poignant, 
had created for me. He had thrust himself grotesquely 
out of his mute relation with that setting; he had thrown 
out of adjustment this phantasmal perspective of Judah 
persistent in her lamentations against the unlamenting 


9 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


immortality of Greece. He was mad, or I. Both of us 
were mad. But that was not our only kinship. We were 
Jews, were we not! 

Then I turned round to him and cried out sharply in 
Yiddish: “Zog mir a mol! What is with thee? What 
sort of a black year is upon thee?” 

I had the man. He squirmed as in a noose. He was 
bound. I saw him wince and bite his lips. 

“Know’st thou not?” I continued severely. “Know’st 
thou not this is Yom Kippur? ‘This is the Day of 
Atonement?” 

He did not wince now. The huge umbrella he had just 
grasped slipped from his fingers. “Yom Kippur?” he 
breathed. I could hardly hear him. “Brother, brother, 
this is the Day of Atonement!” He fell back, a relaxed 
bundle of bones, against the trunk of the carob-tree. 
“Long ago, long ago!” His mind seemed to draw inward 
upon itself and to be absorbed down some funnel of dark 
memory. “I have not forgotten. No. I cannot forget.” 
He beat his bosom twice, three times, with his clenched 
fist. So at that moment were those others, in the syna- 
gogue at Doomington. Then his eyes sought mine. 
“Must thou leave me, brother? Wilt thou come with 
me to my house? It is not far away. ‘Thou seest the 
white wall beyond the olive-groves there. ‘Thou seest it, 
dost thou not?” 

“I will come gladly. But this strangeness, what is the 
meaning of it all?” 

“Yom Kippur! I have not forgotten, Jew; I cannot 
forget.” 

I had thought him a moment ago a goat-herd from 
Sicily. At this moment he seemed a Jew broken and 
helpless trom the rack of a fifteenth-century ghetto in 

10 


Pete OO G Uy NGS P CaleE y 


Spain or a twentieth-century ghetto in Russia. His voice 
was flattened into a joyless monotony I remembered well. 
So chanted the old men in the synagogues in the late eve- 
nings, recalling their sorrows, and for the space of a single 
twilight forswearing the belief that had upheld them so 
long, that some day sorrows would be ended. 

And his years seemed to have slipped from his shoul- 
ders, leaving him at once older and much younger than be- 
fore. He was a boy of twelve or thirteen. There was 
an air of timidity about him, under the grey immanence of 
the chimneys and the smoke. Where should he now ad- 
dress himself? 

I was to learn how he addressed himself to the pagan 
gods. 
It was my duty for the moment to endeavour to restore 
to him, so far as my feeble powers could, that dumb self- 
possession which had held him motionless in his corner 
against the carob-tree. English, at all events, I must 
speak English. ‘The goats were preceding us along a path 
between low vines. The bell of their leader tinkled 
rustily. 

“You say I am the only English Jew you have seen in 
these parts for some time. You don’t get many visitors 
here at all, do you?” I spoke as casually as I might, as 
if to walk on the southern rim of Sicily with a goat-herd 
from the pale of Russia, speaking Yiddish with the accent 
of the yeshivehs (which are the houses of sacred study), 
happened to me whenever I set foot from London. 

“You must not make conversation with me,” he said. 
“We must not be polite to each other. I want to talk 
to you not because you are yourself. I don’t know you. 
Why should I know you? But because, until I have 
talked with you, a Jew from England, the last link is not 

II 


DAY Od TOU ERMAEAN 21 
cut through. I have fought hard to be free. I thought 


I was free. ITamnot. I must talk to you.” 

“It will be hard. I have not talked English for many 
years. And the other language ... the other.. .” 

“Viddish?” 

“Yes. Had I asked myself ten years ago, I would have 
said, ‘I cannot understand a word of it or speak a word. 
What have that language and they who speak it to do 
with me?’ And I have learned that it still lies as easy 
on my tongue as hair on the head. What shall I do then? 
Shall I cut out my tongue? Yes, that is what I shall in- 
deed do, talking with you to-day. 

“May I talk with you?” 

I begged him not to pain me with such a question. My 
words pleased him, for he awoke for a moment to a feel- 
ing of my existence as apart from our extraordinary en- 
counter. 

“You know Sicily?” he asked. 

But I was aware, even as I replied, his mind was not 
with me and would not be. What symbolic function I 
had assumed for him I could not yet divine, but as a 
personality, as a being whose flesh transgressed the sharp 
limits of that abstraction, I existed for him less than the 
poorest of these goats. His next words assured me I was 
not mistaken. 

“I was born in England,” he said. 

“Ves,” 

“In the north, in Doomington.” 

With whom else could I, or could any one, have resisted 
claiming, in such a place, kinship in such a city? We who 
were both suckled at the hearts of yellow fog, we whose 
childhood lay both appalled under the blank eyes of the 
same factories—we who now were cresting a slope of 

12 


PROP OGOEUNG ST OLENY: 


arbutus and holm-oak under the traces of a Hellene city, 
about whose feet flickered the blue thistles of Sicily ... 
yet I said not a word. No personal relationship was to be 
established between us, I understood clearly and dis- 
passionately. So far as my own bodily fingers went I 
felt him as intangible as a ghost. We were two Jews side 
by side in Sicily. That sufficed. Should he die to- 
morrow, or should I, it would be to the other as if a wind 
had crossed his path and ceased blowing. 

We had attained his house. ‘There was nothing to dis- 
tinguish it from the huts of poor peasants and goat-herds 
anywhere in Sicily; nothing at least to strike the eye from 
without. The walls were whitewashed and windowless, 
the vault of the roof covered with a sort of pitchy compo- 
sition and raised but little from the horizontal. Several 
slim chestnut poles supported a vine in front of the door. 
A few chickens scratched under it. A patch of olives, 
flanked by almond-trees, ran seaward on the descending 
slope. At the side of the house was a small open kitchen, 
roofed over with a few twigs. The house itself consisted 
almost entirely of a single living-room; there seemed to be 
a small store-room for vegetables and dried manure be- 
yond. ‘There was little spare in the living-room for more 
than the bed and a couple of chairs. The table was in the 
open, under the vine. What was missing from the place? 
What did I so inevitably associate with interiors like 
these? What was missing? I realized with a sudden 
start. 

No little oil lamp of cheap blue glass burning before a 
plaster image of Mary. No fly-blown oleograph of Christ 
crowned with thorns, pointing to his discovered heart, 
likewise thorn-crowned, luridly bleeding year’s end to 
year’s end. 


13 


DAY OF CAT OW eM EN 


I could make out in the darkness a pale flare of marble 
over against the door. My eyes growing apter, I could 
distinguish the exquisite chiselling of a youth’s hair; so 
much, curiously, had survived whatever sport of sea or 
wind or earth had extracted from the rest of the head, 
contour, feature, everything but poise; the unmistakable, 
unparalleled, unsubdued poise of the marble gods of 
Greece. 

“Nuzza!” cried my companion, sharply. “Where art 
thou?” 

There was no reply. 

“Nuzza!” he called again. “Come, a stranger!” 

I heard such a noise as a lizard makes slipping through 
the grass. A woman stood before us. I hardly knew if 
she had stepped out from the olives or from round the op- 
posite side of the house. Her legs and feet were naked, 
her rich, black hair was wound carelessly behind her head 
in one huge loop. In the quivering of the lower lip was 
something of diffidence, of fear. There were such un- 
plumbed pits in her eyes that all the devils may have 
housed there. : 

“Caruccio?” she asked, her voice like a bird’s at evening 
in thick undergrowth. ‘What wouldst thou?” 

“The children,” he said. “Where are they?” 

“Who should know where children are?” 

Then he whipped round suddenly. “Ciccio! Out 
there at once!” 

I became aware of a pair of eyes moving, and a head 
with them, and a small, slim body. A child of seven or 
eight came forward reluctantly from behind the swollen 
trunks of a clump of cactus. He scowled at me under a 
shock of wild hair. He was attended immediately by a 
lesser creature like his own shadow diminished, a girl of 


14 


BROLOGULEVUNGST GLLY 


six, imitating his scowl and the sideways projection of the 
head, at once impudent and very much afraid. 

“My children,” he said, pointing toeachin turn. “That 
will help you to understand.” 

What should it help me to understand? That there 
were bars between us more potent than bonds? The chil- 
dren had both disappeared again. I was aware of them 
during the tale that followed as shapes, as voices, as swift 
flame-like presences allowing no more than a glimpse of 
themselves, as swords that slashed their way through the 
knotted rope. There was a strand they had not succeeded 
in breaking. 

“Wine, Nuzza, wine! We have business together!” 

The woman set the wine down and two beakers. 
When, later in the day, she brought cheese and figs and 
bread, once more she set them down as if she addressed 
the service only to one man, her own. Her man was the 
centre upon which all her wild passion converged. He 
gave meaning to her hair, her bone, her blood. But as 
the shadows lengthened, as her mate was rapt away from 
her, deeper and deeper for this final day into the heart of 
the mourning race he had forsworn, a hatred of me grew 
in her, as if in her marrow she divined that I came from a 
territory where these blue skies were displaced by the grey 
pall of desolation, where they would hound her into the 
waste pits, scapegoat for their offences, this day of their 
Atonement, where she was anathema and her children 
pestilence. 


I have done what I could to give form and coherence to 
the story told me by Reuben, the goat-herd of Sicily, 
whose father and mother were Eli and Leah from Kravno 
in Russia, on the upper Dnieper. We shall not meet each 


15 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


other again until world’s end. But I feel this narrative to 
be my duty towards him, for else he will not thoroughly 
have achieved his exorcism, it seems to me, and the ghost 
of a ghost will persist between himself and that dark 
woman of the olive-grove sloping towards the African sea. 


16 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


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CHAPTER ONE 


I 


lage, had shown her the creek, the thrill of stepping 

slowly from the grass bank into the water, of feeling 
its cool circlets rising spirally like a serpent about ankles 
and knees and hips, would have been less exquisite, for it 
would have been less guilty. Just these few yards of vel- 
vet grass, and the water, and the double curtain of reeds 
and willows, just these and the pulsing midsummer sun. 
Of course if her mother had the faintest inkling that she 
had been keeping company of late with Rivkah—during 
Rivkah’s off-times, which weren’t many—there would be 
the devil to pay. She stroked her smooth limbs luxuri- 
ously. No, she hadn’t had a beating for weeks. Those 
nasty blue weals across the arms had now quite disap- 
peared. She regarded her young breast, her shining hair, 
complacently, and pillowed her head on her hands, and 
smiled up at the deep sky. First Rivkah, then Friday. 
That made it doubly sinful to go off singing to the river. 
On Friday of all days in the week. So much to do at 
home in preparation for the Sabbath day—the samovar to 
brighten up, the beetroots to prepare for the borsht, and 
the fish in sweet-and-sour sauce to follow. All the coarser 
work was left to Motka, the little gentile girl from Prijni 
across the river. Scrubbing floors and cleaning out hen- 


19 


li anybody else than Rivkah, the easy girl of the vil- 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


coops was good enough work for gentiles. Preparing the 
brasses was her own work pre-eminently. What joy it 
gave her to polish the trays so piously that she could see 
her face almost as clearly as in a mirror, like some guber- 
nator’s daughter. What a brave show her candlesticks 
made in a serried mass on the white table-cloths on Friday 
evenings! Like yellow irises among the reeds here in the 
river, earlier in the year. Most of them would be her 
own too, when she married—when, that is, they found a 
husband good enough for Leah, the daughter of Serra 
Golda, the grocer, and Reb Yankel. Curious how Reb 
Yankel was always an afterthought. It was as if he 
didn’t exist for his own sake, so much as to give Serra 
Golda the opportunity of being the model Jewish wife 
of Kravno. 

A husband good enough for Leah, the daughter of 
Serra Golda. She extended her limbs along the velvet 
grass, feeling how desirable they were, what a rich blood 
flowed in them, making snow and cherries. She slipped 
her heel along into the water. Plop! went some little 
beast of the river, lulled by her immobility as she lay 
there dreaming, into thinking her a fallen willow with a 
smoother and whiter skin than the others. 

It had all seemed a little jaded that afternoon— 
poking out the samovar, sweating away at the brasses— 
leave it all to Motka. Even the birds to-day were too 
lazy to sing, everything too lazy to work, excepting the 
down-river breeze, and he put no energy into it either. 
Well, there’d be no time for a beating before the Sabbath 
came in that evening. That meant respite—she ticked off 
the intervals with her fingers—evening, night, morning, 
afternoon, evening. For her mother would no sooner beat 

20 


PRIGLHIDESINGRUSSITA 


her on the Sabbath than she would boil a kettle. Six 
days shalt thou labour. But the seventh day is the Sab- 
bath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any 
work. Leah didn’t mind a little guilty rest on the sixth 
either. Perhaps Pappa would say a good word for her. 
Not that that did much good in itself, but his intercession 
had been known to divert the current of expostulation 
towards himself on several occasions. ‘That was another 
interval. Besides, till to-morrow morning anybody might 
come riding by on a dappled-grey horse. ‘The son of the 
King of France, the Emperor of America, the Pope of all 
Persia. She did not think of these gentlemen as Jews or 
Christians. ‘They wore red tassels upon their swords. 
They wore feathers in their hats. If she married any of 
them, she would not be forced to eat barley. Leah hated 
barley. Rivkah was going to marry the Commercial- 
Traveller-in-Chief of Austria when he next came to 
Kravno on his rounds, to buy hay, maize, and oats. 

Rivkah said this thing. Rivkah said the other thing. 
How drowsy the air was. How bravely the sun shone. 
Bumble—bumble! How lovely to lie naked among the 
willows. Sish! sish! Secret little noises at the edge of 
the water, among the reeds, tiny teeth nibbling. 

A sharper noise struck her ear-drums. Not loud. 
Only loud in this solitude. She lifted her head, attentive, 
startled. Then she knew she had not been alone—trac- 
ing the curve of her lips, smoothing her body down from 
the armpits and up again on the under side of her arms. 
You cannot deceive God. 

She was aware of his eyes between the bulrushes before 
she actually saw them, big with desire, steady with the 
certainty of its gratification. Then she saw their pale 

2% 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


fringes, and the large desirous orbs themselves. With 
hardly any further movement, the rest of him detached 
itself. 

Sergei from Prijni over the river. Not a moujik, not 
a gentleman, you saw him come slouching over the bridge 
with a straw between his teeth. He had spoken to her 
more than once in a low voice, private, for her own ear 
only. Even Rivkah had made no comment, and she was 
more schooled than most people to the perception of these 
advances. A beautiful creature, brutal, uncouth. They 
said he was the son of a great landowner in Kiev and 
the bed-ridden peasant woman over in Prijni, who man- 
aged to get money to keep alive, nobody knew whence. 
Certainly not from her son, Sergei, who spent half his time 
before the image in the corner, and the rest with the 
priests, or crying “Jew! Jew!” as some greybeard passed, 
carrying his praying-shawl to the tiny timber synagogue 
of Kravno. It had been burned down three times since 
five winters ago. Five winters ago Sergei and his mother 
first made their appearance in these parts. 

He had other occupations, besides these diversions 
among the priests and the Jews, at night, prowling among 
the haystacks or down by the close fringes of the Dnieper 
Rivkah could tell you something about them; but she 
made some effort to keep her mouth shut before Leah, 
the daughter of her mother, the little dark, packed rose- 
bud, just opening. There was a quality of insistence in 
his large, grey eyes, something at once pitiful and terrible. 
Coming from his hour-long prostrations before the smoky 
ikon, his eyes were hungry, as if they sought a solace 
denied him in the close hut, where his mother turned 
querulous on the bed, and the flies were thick as night. 

And sometimes you would see that shiftless body 

22 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


straightened like a prince and his forehead firm against 
heaven. Then the thought of him was like a torrent— 
whispered Rivkah—but he was further away than the top 
of a high tree, or a cloud. And of a sudden he would 
loosen all his powerful limbs, again, and become aware 
of you, with those summoning, irresistible eyes. 

Twice, three times, he had spoken in a low voice to 
Leah. She had not caught a word. She placed her hand 
at her heart, which was pecking away at the flesh there, 
like a beak. And at home all that day she would work 
harder than a man, washing, ironing, polishing. She 
would put such devotion into the cooking that Reb Yankel 
would seat her upon his knee, big girl that she was, and 
fondle her. ‘Till Serra Golda came in. And away sprang 
Leah into the shop, weighing bags of lump sugar like a 
machine, all evening, and straight on till midnight, till she 
was too tired to stand. 

A flush crawled slowly like a tide the length of her 
white, naked body. She felt the hairs of her head tingle 
separately. Her finger-nails and _ toe-nails burned. 
Shame, shame, shame upon her, daughter of Israel! 
Could the river but rise about her suddenly and engulf 
her, but not in translucent water. O water, black as ink, 
black as sin, to hide her shame for ever! Her mother, 
tower of all the pride of Jewry, humbled in the dust with 
this disgrace. ‘There would be no slow smile about her 
father’s lips to burrow into his beard. He would not slap 
her face playfully when she came in talking, and inter- 
rupted him as he stood in prayer, facing the east. 

How cold she was now in the hot, late noon. Every 
vein was ice. Still the lumbering body came forward 
almost insensibly, still making no noise save the knocking 
together of the reeds. Was she to fly, was she to turn 


23 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


and fly? As well might a fawn from a panther, so the 
more speedily to bring the pointed teeth deep into the soft 
flesh behind the shoulder. His eyes were the more beauti- 
ful that they were so sad as they looked down upon her. 

God, how beautiful his eyes were! ‘The lips, how firmly 
moulded for deeper pressing and deeper upon a young 
rose-petal mouth. What was this? Horror upon hor- 
ror! O abominable! O treachery! A cry sprang from 
her lips. She was aware of a subtle warmth flooding her 
body, she was aware of her fingers, taut, desirous. She 
was aware of the golden down upon his cheek, of his lips, 
of his heathen limbs, arms, thighs. 

Should they not take her to an open space beyond the 
houses and then stone her till the breath was out of her 
recreant body? Leave this body, lusting so impiously, 
black and marred, without shape, the blood thickening 
upon her foul breast? 

But the grass, the grass—how soft it was, softer than 
all the swansdown gathered by her mother these long 
years against her marriage with some honourable Jewish 
youth, rich, and a scholar. The water kissing the reeds, 
the willows kissing the water. Young blood and young 
desire! A tide was carrying her away among sleepy 
odours, away, away! How should her weak limbs battle 
against a current fierce as this, gentle as this? Her eye- 
lids closed slowly over her subdued eyes. And she heard 
a great crashing among the trees, a crying, a labouring of 
breath. She saw a black bolt hurl itself through the wil- 
lows. She heard the impact of body upon body. She 
saw Sergei flung upon his back, then raise himself rue- 
fully and stroke his head. He blinked. His slow lips 
tried to mumble some clumsy blasphemy. But the small 
lithe body of Eli, Eli the yeshiveh student, stood over 


24 


PRELUDE VPN TRUSS IA 


him, expanding and contracting like her own heart. His 
fists clawed the air. 

Shame surged back upon her in a great salt billow. 
Her eyes shed tears like a sudden April shower. Her 
breast was sick with sobs. 

“Eli!” she cried, covering her face. “Eli! God be 
thanked! God be thanked!” 

The youth was turned away from her, hiding her naked- 
ness from himself and the other. His fists were still 
clenching and unclenching in his white, blazing anger. 

“Dress thyself!” he gasped, like a man emerging after 
a plunge into water. “All is well! Fear nothing!” 

Hunched up into a quivering ball, she moved a yard or 
two towards her clothing. “Tell me,” she said, her tears 
falling thickly upon her shift, “how didst thou know to 
come? Eli, Eli, God be thanked! Hadst thou not 
come .’ Once more her weeping overcame speech. 

How could she move her limbs freely? Had not the 
teeth of the trap been about her ankles? What had 
brought him here? The questions came pounding in upon 
her brain. And she was not unaware, even at this 
tangled, burning moment, of a swift thrill of pride. For 
her, for her, Eli the remote, the pale withdrawn student 
immured in the synagogue twenty hours each day among 
the worm-eaten tomes of Mishna and Talmud, for her 
Eli had wrenched himself into the world where cool waters 
flow, and the cheeks of girls are cool. Eli about whose 
head hovered, said the old women, a dim flame of sanctity 
when at midnight he shut the door of the synagogue be-. 
hind him and staggered home, his eyes almost sightless: 
after the intensity of the day’s study. 

“Eli, how didst thou know to come!” 

“It was Rivkah,” he replied. “I was entering the: 


25 





DAY OF ATONEMENT 
synagogue and she pulled me by the coat. Reb Yossel 


was with me and would not let her speak with me. But 
I saw there was urgency. She told me she had seen him, 
this one—following. She had fear. I came. Go into 
the deep greenness there, and dress thyself like a Jewish 
daughter!” 

She gathered up her clothes and fled into the hazel- 
thicket. ‘The wind brought the noise of crying geese to 
her ears, faint and contemptuous. She dug her small, 
pointed teeth into her lip. Two great tears of utter 
humiliation stood in her eyes so that she could hardly 
see what garment to pick up first. 

Eli must never understand, least of all Eli. She would 
beat her head against the wall if she knew that the heart 
of Eli had been darkened by her shame. Hidden from 
the gross world in the holy obscurity of the books, pursu- 
ing his saintly paths through the thickets of Talmud, a 
light to his race in the gathering darkness of these later 
days, how could she bear it if he guessed for the ghost 
of a moment? No. More than her mother, more than 
her father even, Eli must not understand how Lilith 
whispered in the garden and she had hearkened to Lilith. 


II 


She stood dressed in her small purple bodice and 
straight skirt. You could see the light pink stockings 
between the flaps of her low boots where her numbed 
fingers had not been able to button them. Her hair, 
which was usually tied in plaits and bound with one 
coloured ribbon above the brow, now hung straight be- 
hind her to the waist, still limp after her bathe. What 
was expected from her now? Was Eli waiting for her 


26 


bt GE LN OR Sie 


there, on the grass bank? Would it be modest to seek 
him again, when some minutes ago he had seen her 
thus? He must have seen her, however soon he had 
turned away. Yet was it to be presumed that he would 
allow her to return to the village alone, with that burldk, 
that clod-hopper, still hanging about? A flutter of pleas- 
ure stirred in her quickening blood. She swung her hair 
round and rubbed the rich mass between her tingling 
hands. Perhaps she could get some movement into it 
again even now, before air and sun had their way with 
it. She caressed it where it lay along her shoulder. 

“Be beautiful,” she murmured, “for the sake of a prince 
in Israel!” 

Timidly she made her way out of the hazels towards 
the willows and the water again. She stopped. She 
heard the sound of conversation, low, easy, natural. Her 
first instinct was to fly at once. Some other person must 
have made his appearance whilst she was dressing in the 
thicket. Who could it be? Had Rivkah appeared? Riv- 
kah and Eli alone in the untrodden places by the river? 
The thought was fantastic. Fine food for gossip in the 
synagogue and the shops. Perhaps there had even been 
a witness to her own discomfiture? She quickened her 
steps. It was not Yiddish they were talking. There was 
no mistaking its intonations. That was the voice of Eli. 
He was talking Russian. With whom? Question. 
Reply. Some words of exposition, remonstrance. Ques- 
tion. Silence. A bee humming. Whose voice was that? 
She moved some yards forward. Whose voice was that— 
thick and awkward? Her pulses throbbed. That could 
not be Sergei? She glided forward between the tree- 
trunks. 

It seemed that her eyes must start forward out of her 


27 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


head, or be smitten with darkness. Had it been Rivkah 
with Eli, she could have understood. A Jewish daughter, 
a lamb from the flock however smirched. But could it 
be? This hater of their race, this scoffer at old men, 
this flinger of mud at the palms and citrons when they 
perambulated between house and synagogue at the time 
of festival! Was Eli mad? Had he not ten minutes ago 
hurled himself between this foul creature and his lust, this 
monster swooping upon the undefiled body of a daughter 
of Israel! 

Eli was seated against a tree, his head bent forward 
like a bird’s. He was looking through contracted eye- 
lids upon the face of Sergei, as upon some new com- 
mentary, elucidating an obscure passage that had long 
eluded him. His mouth was pursed together, the first 
finger of the left hand lay along the first finger of the 
right, in a manner at once inquisitive and expository. 
It was a mannerism familiar enough at the yeshiveh, the 
house of study. His whole manner was one of profound 
interest and curiosity. The anger that had so convulsed 
him when Leah had last set eyes upon him might have flared 
up and expired a season ago, or might never have blazed 
at all. The hulk of Sergei’s body was supported upon one 
colossal hand, the fingers splayed out upon the grass. 
The rest of him extended loose and shambling towards the 
water’s edge. His light grey eyes were furtive and watch- 
ful. They were not easy. ‘There was no doubt that now, 
in cold blood, if these two youths set upon each other, in 
a few moments Eli would lie at Sergei’s heel, bleeding. 
But if it was the sudden impact of his rage that had sent 
the Russian sprawling, there was as little doubt that the 
cool strength and fervour of Eli’s intelligence kept in 
subjection the blond, dangerous mass of the other. As 

28 


PRELUDEOIN RUSSIA 


Leah looked down between the dropped willow branches 
upon the two young men, a palsy seized her. Never in 
her life before had she known such horror, such indigna- 
tion. 

“I ask again,” said Eli, “why do you so hate us, why 
are we Jews like bones in your throat, that you will defile 
our women and split our babes upon spikes. Tell me, 
Sergei, why is this? I cannot understand.” ‘There was 
no sub-tone of resentment in the inquiry. Precisely with 
these inflections might Eli pursue some complex gram- 
matical puzzle in the company of the scholars of Kravno. 
“Why is this, Sergei? For are we not as other men?” 

Sergei fumbled about with his loose hand. The fingers 
found their way into a pocket and brought out a raw 
onion, that still carried its brown shell and its roots. He 
lifted it to his mouth and bit. Then he chewed rumi- 
natively. 

“Yes?” Eli insisted. 

“The priest says 

“Yes, the priest over in Prijni?” 

“The priest says that Jews are necessary. God sends 
them. They are like lice. If Christians had no lice they 
would go down to the grave without washing once.” He 
spat out the onion roots in a powerful projection towards 
the water. Then he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. 
“Why should Christians wash if not for lice?” Silence 
followed. To Eli it seemed that the heavy wits creaked 
almost audibly like some wain lurching at night with a 
stack of maize along the country roads, some crude, raw 
harvest for the clacking fowls or the pigs. He realized 
there was no quickening the pace of that waggon. The 
horses lumbered along. 


“And the priest says, ‘God sends Jews. They are 
29 


23 





DAY OF ATONEMENT 


necessary, like lice.” The cart was doubling on its 


tracks. “But when the priest is drunk he says, ‘Chris- 
tlans need not wash every month. ‘There are other ways 
of slaying lice, not only drowning them. ‘Then we arise 
and slay the lice!” 

“But Sergei, the priest is often not drunk. I am certain 
he is a good and holy man. What does he say when he is 
sober?” 

“He says nothing.” 

“You are lying, Sergei. You are always ready to lift 
a curse or a clot of mud. Why is it? What is the fuel 
that stokes the fire?” 

Sergei looked up craftily. He tapped the side of his 
nose with his finger. 

“Ah, Jews,” he said, “You know.” 

Eli bent forward persuasively. “Tell me!” 

Leah placed her fingers in her mouth and bit them hard 
to prevent herself screaming. 

“You have done it yourself often,’ 
are a young Jew-priest, no?” 

“No. I am nothing. I only study day and night the 
holy books of our race. What is it you are hiding?” 

A look of fright lay upon Sergei’s face for two moments, 
then slowly faded from it like a man receding into a mist. 

“At Easter,” he said. 

“The Passover we call it. Yes?” 

“The little Christian child for the blood-offering, eh?” 
He leered knowingly. All the colour ebbed from Eli’s 
cheeks, already pale enough. 

“Now! Now!” shrieked a voice in Leah’s brain. 
“Now at last he will rise and leave the impurity! Now 
he has trafficked long enough with the evil thing! 
Brother, brother, flee!” 


> said Sergei. “You 


30 


PRA IE AN US OR Oil vA 


But the colour came back into Eli’s cheeks. A smile 
fell upon the corners of his mouth. He settled himself 
more comfortably against the tree. You might have 
thought him in the synagogue surrounded by the admiring 
greybeards. In the watches of the night he had struggled 
with some cunning problem of interpretation and exegesis. 
He saw it all clearer than daylight now. He would ex- 
plain. 

He slapped the hollow of his palm. “Sergei,” he said 
evenly. “It is like this. Whereas in the time of our 
bondage in Egypt, it was enjoined upon us if 

But she could listen no more. Sick, incredibly mor- 
tified, her ear-drums beating a hideous tattoo, she sped 
back into the wood and thence towards the open meadow. 
Only Sergei heard the crackling of twigs underfoot as she 
flung herself away. In a level, passionless voice Eli 
proceeded to expose the fallacy. Sergei munched his 
onions complacently while reference and cross-reference 
to talmudist upon talmudist wove a sleepy pattern upon 
the air like gossamer suspended from the branches. 

Sick, incredibly mortified! She had not been so hu- 
miliated even when her mother at her tenth birthday 
had stripped her and beaten her before her friends! 
She hated him. Pale and smooth, in love with his own 
learning, and with no other thing or thought in the 
world! Angel of the old women, the old men’s darling! 
She hated him. 

With arrogant insistence the thought of that other 
youth came back to her. She shrank from it, was en- 
kindled by it. How firm and mighty the body of Sergei 
extended under the willows towards the water! What 
lips were those, casual and terrible! 

“God pity me!” she moaned. “A daughter of Israel!” 


31 





CHAPTER TWO 


I 


66 ADDANU,” said Leah, “little father, I can bear 
it less than beatings. Why does she not beat 
mes, 


“Two roubles forty kopecks, one rouble twenty, no 
roubles sixty-five kopecks,’ chanted Reb Yankel aloud. 
It could do no harm to give his wife the impression that 
nothing in the world occupied his thoughts excepting 
the shop accounts. Nevertheless she was probably safe 
for half an hour yet, for he had left Rochel, the bed- 
maker’s wife, behind him, buying eggs. Rochel would 
hold each egg up to the light as fastidiously as the paper 
money that relatives sometimes sent in from America. 
She would hold them up straight, then reverse them, for 
all the.world as if they were the holy citrons that people 
carried about with them on the Feast of Tabernacles. 
Then she would hold them to her ear, while a particularly 
knowing expression came into her eyes. It was from 
- her nose that she withheld them. ‘That would be alto- 
gether too unsubtle a test for so eminent a connoisseur. 
And all the while Serra Golda would maintain a stream 
of amiable conversation, for that was her line. She had 
realized twenty years ago that if you converted the 
purchase of pickled cucumber and salted herrings out of 
a mere business of drab domestic routine into a pleasant 
social function, success lay before you. And it came. 


32 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


Cheikah, the widow, had long ago sold her stock to Serra 
Golda, her bustling young rival, and made off for Odessa 
and the Holy Land. Whenever Cheikah had been in- 
duced to accompany her sales with conversation at all, 
it was merely to pay a lugubrious tribute to the piety of 
her deceased husband. In Jerusalem, at the Weeping 
Wall, that fragment of the Temple where so many cen- 
turies of Jewish pilgrims had shed such copious oceans 
of tears, she would be able to attest her husband’s merits 
without interrupting the attestation to sell a pound of 
pearl barley. More recently, Izzel Chaim, a young 
widower from Sveksna, an up-river village, had set up 
another grocery shop at the further end of the village. 
He had been a money-lender and did not lack capital, 
The only thing he lacked was Serra Golda’s conversa- 
tional gift. It would make his gall boil—so people 
phrased it—to see folk who were his own customers by 
every sort of prescriptive geographical right, go hurrying 
by towards Serra Golda’s black olives and improving con- 
versation. As for the accounts—Serra Golda’s husband, 
Reb Yankel, could be trusted with the accounts. Human 
contacts, that was her department, flesh and blood, buyers 
and sellers. 

Leah, big girl that she was, snuggled up more com- 
fortably on her father’s knee. Then she placed his arms 
round her neck and rubbed her dark brown hair into his 
dark brown beard. Gently he disengaged her hands, 
swung them away from him and behind her on to the 
table. One after one, he lifted the delicate little fingers 
and let them fall again. 

“Léanu!” he whispered. He kissed her gently on the 
forehead. “Little daughter!” She closed her eyes and 
made little pleased noises in her throat. 


33 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


Why must she ever move? Could she ever elsewhere 
be so happy? ‘To stay here from now till the New Year, 
on and on, forgetting and forgotten. It would always be 
twilight, so that nobody would come in and interrupt, say- 
ing: “It is Yom Kippur, now, the Day of Atonement. 
Rise, prepare yourselves for the synagogue!” And the 
harsh day would pass over their heads like a cloud, and 
the festival of Tabernacles would come, but she would do 
nothing more than sleepily tangle and disentangle her 
father’s beard, and he would do nothing more than stroke 
her fingers, from the nail to the knuckle, from the knuckle 
along the blue veins. And the shrill festivities of Sim- 
chath Torah would follow with dancing and dancing and 
dancing about the Ark of the Law. But they would not 
move, Leah the child that should never be a woman, and 
Rab Yankel, the father, who was lovelier than all lovers 
in the world. 

There was the clang of a bell as the shop door opened 
and closed. 

“Ops a little daughter!” said Reb Yankel, shifting his 
daughter from his knee. “Two roubles twenty and one 
rouble forty-five makes three roubles sixty-five kopecks, 
no?” But the bell clanged again to the opening and the 
closing of the door. Another customer. 

Leah was standing at the left corner of the mantel- 
shelf where it extended towards the wonderful new clay 
stove, imported from Austria. She had made a per- 
functory movement towards the brass mortar and pestle 
that stood on the shelf there. You might as well flick 
away a non-existent speck of dust from the mortar and 
pestle as pretend to do anything else. She shook her 
head rebelliously. 

“YT would rather, daddanu, that she had beaten me ten 


34 


Pies Or) ETN ORSU SSA 


times and ten times again, than that she should treat me 
like a log of wood for the stove. Even to Motka she will 
say, ‘Do this, shiksah! Do that, shiksah? Am I less 
than a moujik’s daughter?” 

“A daughter, a daughter,” said Reb Yankel, “that goes 
out, the Above One knows where, into the fields on the 
eve of the Sabbath—Brrrrrr!” he growled, with factitious 
fierceness. “Such a year upon all our enemies!” 

She stamped her foot. “Let her beat me then! And 
did I not say”—you could gather from the innocence of 
her tone that she had said it at least five times—‘“did I 
not say I was with Eli?” She had forborne from men- 
tioning any name at all. 

“With Eliz” repeated her father. “A credit upon his. 
race! May his kind multiply! Hadst thou but said 
Eli!” 

She turned away from him and stooped towards the 
stove, flushing abominably. She felt sick at her decep- 
tion, and she knew it to be twenty times as wicked 
because it was a twentieth part of the truth. And still 
worse than that, ever so much worse than that, it was 
her father, bearded like God and many times more agree- 
able, she had lied to. 

“Thou art blushing, daughter?” 

“Tt is the fire!” she said. In her confusion she had 
forgotten the stove was not lit to-day. Had not her 
mother made it clear ten minutes ago that the samovar 
was to be prepared? Was there not a guest coming in to 
take tea with lemon this evening and lekach, sweet cake 
with grain? 

“Ops, ops, ops! A maiden! Ops, ops, a grown-up 
maiden!” said Reb Yankel playfully. It was desolating. 
He could interpret no thought or gesture of hers save 


35 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


into something candid and luminous as his own spirit. 
“And a grown-up maiden,” he chaffed her, “sits upon her 
father’s knee and will have him tell her tales! Hast 
thou ever seen such a Léanu?” 

That was just the trouble—a grown-up maiden. Yet 
how different it sounded when he put it so. When Leah 
had returned that Friday evening from her escapade by 
the river, her mother had not filled the air with promise 
of retribution on the evening after the Sabbath. It 
startled Leah that her mother took it with so rigid a 
silence. Whenever Serra Golda walked through the house 
for the next few days she was a focus of icy disapproval. 
No direct word passed between the mother and daughter. 
Leah was allowed to fulfil her household duties entirely 
upon her own initiative, and—what was more devastating 
—though it was made quite evident that at least as much 
labour as usual was expected from her in the shop, no 
orders were issued. She had to determine for herself 
whether the bags of weighed sugar were running short 
and which was the best quality of baking-flour. She was 
terrorized into a mechanical precision of choice and per- 
fection of conduct. Hourly she felt the sweet solaces of 
girlhood fall from her. Long ago she had determined that 
when once the insidious lines grooved the smooth skin be- 
tween the nostrils and the corners of her mouth, she would 
exile herself for ever from her kind, ashamed of so 
palpable a token of senility. Feeling herself as the chill 
day advanced more and more a desiccated woman, she 
was certain the grooves she had feared were already 
channelling her face. She was certain that her forehead 
was sagging and wrinkled. She had no doubt that a 
strange young man riding upon his white horse into 

36 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


Kravno, so far from realizing her to be sixteen, would 
imagine her at least twenty-two. 

Nor had her mother so completely ignored her but 
that the words “woman, grown-up woman” were not 
once and again repeated in her hearing. The inference 
was that you do not punish with blows a woman, a 
grown-up woman, for the dereliction of her duties, and 
her inadequacy to the unimpeachable example set by 
her mother. ‘The time had come when she herself might 
be expected to set an example to her younger sisters in 
Jewry. 

The time had come for more even than this. 

There was a noise of footsteps in the small passage 
between the shop and the living-room. The bell must | 
have missed fire this time. It did occasionally. ‘That 
bell ought to be seen to, if ever there was any finding 
Boruch sober—Boruch, the locksmith, the handcart- 
painter, the measurer for coffins. Schnaps half the day 
and all the night! Soaked and soused in schnaps like 
a cucumber. When Long Faivel died, the coffin that 
had been sent in could not have accommodated a five- 
year-old with comfort. A joke was it? Schnaps was 
it? A scandal in Jewry! That bell would have to be 
seen to. 

“That makes three roubles twenty-two kopecks. Add 
sixty kopecks for dried peas ‘i 

The broad-shouldered, broad-breasted figure of Serra 
Golda was in the room. It was not merely in the door- 
way. It filled all the four corners. There was no space 
of ceiling or floor it did not occupy. Her great earrings 
of twisted gold and brilliants cascaded towards her neck. 
At the very moment of her entrance you might have re- 


37 





DAY OF ALONEMENT 


marked that all her features were disposed into a smile, 
a competent, sympathetic, winning smile. You had no 
difficulty in understanding her success or why the women 
of Kravno, five or six days after childbirth, were already 
restive, fussing to go over to Serra Golda’s to buy candles 
they did not yet want in order to take part in the social 
amenities they did. A moment later, after she had 
crossed the threshold, though her features still retained 
the same relation with each other, you would have seen 
the smile annulled, expunged, like a vapour disappearing 
from a mirror. What connection was there between busi- 
ness with its smiles diplomatic, smiles conciliatory, smiles 
obligatory, and the stern business of running a household 
in Jewry? 

“Leah, thou wilt dress thyself at once in thy best 
yomtov dress, thy dress for the festivals. Go!” They 
were the first words directly addressed to her by her 
mother for five days. “A friend will be here, a matter 
of minutes now. The teapot, thou hast made warm 
the teapot with water from the samovar?” 

Leah knew that if she did not hold her lips tight, she 
would start whimpering. If her mother tolerated the 
least inflection of tenderness in her voice something would 
impel her—as it was impelling her at this moment—to 
launch herself against the ramparts of the enemy. Her 
head ensconced in her mother’s capacious bosom, she would 
howl like any baby with an ache in the stomach. 

“Mammanu, mammanu, I don’t want to be a grown- 
up woman! I am afraid. Kiss me. You used to. Let 
me have my arms about your neck and then about 
dadda’s and about yours once more. Out in the cold 
night of being grown-up, there are wolves padding that 

38 


Pinel ODE IN ERIU SS, [£4 


wait for you. He also is waiting, that one, the terrible. 
I am so frightened, mammanu!” 

Serra Golda turned towards her husband. “Reb 
Nochum, the shadchan, the marriage-maker, is coming 
over from Terkass to-day to regard thy daughter.” 

Leah knew that intonation well. So had her mother 
spoken of the agent from the big stores in Kiev who 
was expected on one day or another with a new line in 
sweet biscuits. 

She stared like a threatened animal towards her father. 
Had he too betrayed her? Did he too desire to thrust 
her forth into the darkness, into strange arms? She saw 
that his surprise was no less than her own. He shook 
his head two or three times. As she withdrew into her 
own room she heard him murmuring: “Wife, couldst 
thou say no word to me? I too am a parent, no?” 
Serra Golda made no reply. Her silences were never less 
eloquent than her speech. 

Curiously leaden, unresponsive, Leah’s limbs were as 
she slipped the festival finery over them. How she had 
gloated over this ring, this comb, the buckles on these 
shoes. With what envy T’sipele had glared, and how 
Henkah had fawned upon her to see her come forth in 
such magnificence. She was too listless to slip the ring 
upon her hand. It fell under the bed and she left it 
there. This was what it meant to be a grown-up woman? 
She was too dispirited even to weep. 

They were already sipping their tea and breaking up the 
lekah cake when she re-entered the living-room. Unheard 
of attention—even for her too a cup of tea was poured 
out and a wedge of cake broken. She drew a chair up 
to the table. “No!” her mother pointed. “Sit on the 


oy 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


edge of the sofa, Léanu!” (Léanu! Leah winced. She 
could address her by her pet name now. And for five 
days she had not allowed her a single drop out of her 
torrent of inexhaustible eloquence.) “Place thy tea on 
the small table, daughter mine!” 

It did not take her long to realize the meaning of 
this maneuvre. The large table would have concealed 
her, now her points were manifest as any horse’s in a 
cattle-show. Her tiny feet, her ankles, her hips, her 
breast—all satisfactory, we think, Reb Nochum? 

Reb Nochum made a gallant effort to put her at her 
ease. “And how goes a Jewish daughter? A pleasure 
it is, should I so live, to see a pair of eyes, jewels are not 
brighter. She blushes too? She knows how to blush 
when it suits her! No evil eye befall her, Reb Yankel, 
a daughter in a hundred, should I so live!” 

He slapped his thighs. He roared with laughter. 
Then amiably he seized the black mass of his beard 
between his thumb and fingers and tugged away at it. 
So thick a growth were his eyebrows that the eyes them- 
selves seemed small and remote and unimportant. But 
‘Leah knew that not before Sergei’s eyes by the river had 
she lain stripped more naked. She felt her thick bodice 
to be filmier than gauze under their smart inquisition. 
Steadily, scientifically, those large expert hands seemed 
to ponder the solidity of her flesh, as they slid about her 
waist, estimated her thighs. 

She could not wholly withdraw into her own morti- 
fication. She knew what it meant when her father 
blinked as he was doing now, as if he had a malady of 
the eyes. She knew how speechlessly wretched he was. 
His spoon tapped nervously without ceasing against his 
tumbler of tea. Serra Golda was not distressed. She 


40 


PRELUDE TA VRC SIA 


had the nerves of an ox. With such a husband, with such 
a daughter, God in heaven, did you not need them? 

A large cube of sugar was wedged between Reb 
Nochum’s brown teeth. The bright red lips, all the 
brighter for the dusky boskage that surrounded them, 
lay folded in flaps about the sugar. Cunningly he sieved 
the tea through it. Only a quarter or a third dripped 
down upon his waistcoat. 

“Such a daughter,” he said, the sugar now being dis- 
integrated,—“‘one in a hundred, should the Above One 
so be kind to my children and me!” 

Serra Golda was at her best. A little sententious (for 
an apophthegm or two was always appreciated by her 
customers), altogether alert and breezy, Reb Nochum 
endorsed amply the fame of her charming manner and 
prepossessing appearance. He was not above a mild 
flirtation himself in the way of business, though it was 
strictly to be understood that no rebate on commission 
was made on that account. ; 

“Such a good housewife,’ the mother was saying, 
“should no evil eye befall her. When you come again, 
Reb Nochum, she shall make varenntkas in your special 
honour. Such paste, you would think an angel, not a 
creature, had kneaded it. And raisins in the stuffing. 
Would you believe it, her own idea from her own head 
it was!” : 

“Enough, let here be no racking of wits. With mar- 
riage it comes, everything. How to cook, how to wash, 
how to make a husband a new pair of fringes, a baby to 
have, male or female f 

There was a noise of feeble expostulation from Reb 
Yankel. “Time yet, time yet " 

“Never too much time,” said Reb Nochum with a touch 

AI 








DAN, OR MAT. ONEM- ENCE 


of severity. “As it says in the passage: ‘I will multiply 
thy seed exceedingly that it shall not be numbered for 
multitude.’ Be content, these gifts come. They grow. 
It is the tree’s nature, like pears upon the pear-tree.” It 
was not to be imagined that the premarital possession of 
culinary and kindred qualifications should unduly in- 
fluence the market. 

“But before the marriage,” inquired Reb Yankel, “two 
or three times they will meet?” 

Serra Golda turned round indulgently towards her 
husband. ‘And before our marriage we met once even?” 

“Those were other days. Now the young generation 
is not growing up with the same ideas mu 

“Tdeas, ideas, tsa—tsa! So much for ideas!” broke in 
Reb Nochum. It was usually the mothers who were 
troublesome. ‘Flesh and blood, marrow and bones, when 
these things change The suggestion was that when 
these things changed, Reb Nochum would think it was 
about time to abandon his profession. “But brotherhood 
is not business.” He felt safe in assuming with this 
admirable woman that they had already arrived at the 
stage of brotherhood and sisterhood. “As I told you, 
Avrom is the son of Zcharyah, the first miller in Terkass, 
who is also a scholar of the Talmud as well as a rich 
man.” Something for an odd moment put a recollection 
of Leah into his mind. He turned towards her with a 
large easy smile. “Avrom, a name, it pleases you:” He 
did not wait for her reply. Her existence slipped out 
of his mind again. “Avrom’s father demands first, that 
after the marriage, the youth shall live in your house- 
hold for two years as a guest and for three, if both you 
and Reb Zcharyah agree on a third year. Then there 
shall be five hundred roubles down on marriage, on the 


42 








TE OE ION RU SSA 


understanding that he himself, when Avrom is nine- 
teen ? 

Reb Yankel’s hands were trembling with agitation. 
He got up from his chair, pushed it from him, pulled it 
in again, sat down. “My daughter,” he said, “I insist 
she goes out. Is she a sack of lentils? Léanu, go and 
tell Henkah that—go away, little daughter. Go away. 
Thou art not wanted.” 

Serra Golda shrugged her shoulders. “What harm 
might it do a daughter? Yet let her go, why not, if her 
father desires it! .. .” Admuirable wifely complacency! 

Leah lifted her eyes towards her father. They were 
piteous with gratitude. 

“I go to Henkah,” she said. “At once!” 





II 


Leah hesitated for a moment outside Henkah’s house. 
She did not like Henkah, if only because Henkah was 
deemed by Serra Golda to be an ideal friend for her. 
It was just because Reb Yankel knew that Henkah’s 
name was a pleasant odour in his wife’s nostrils, that he 
had suggested it. If any suggestion was likely to produce 
neither present opposition nor later reproof, it was the 
suggestion of Henkah. Henkah was a perpetual testi- 
mony to the merit and piety of Serra Golda—a large, 
loose-limbed girl with pale lashes and red hands. In 
the absence of her prime enthusiasm she foisted upon 
Leah, as upon her mother’s most natural deputy, her 
fulsome oblations. Too acutely Leah was conscious 
of the distance by which she did not approach the glories 
imputed her. 

She knew precisely what she wished to do at that 


43 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


moment. At the other end of the village, among the 
tumble-down hovels of the poorest tailors and shoemakers, 
stood Rivkah’s wooden cottage, with its cap of thatch 
slipping down drunkenly upon one side. If the oil 
lamp was hardly burning or not burning at all you were 
better out of the way. If the wick was high, you lifted 
a handful of gravel and flung it at the window. There 
would be a swift movement of shadows within, lengthen- 
ing and contracting upon the further wall. Then the 
lamp was extinguished and in a minute you heard her 
hand at the latch. Then Rivkah was at your side, and 
both of you creeping away into the shadows, out towards 
the fir-woods on the low hills to the north or down 
towards the willowy lands by the river. Excepting her 
father only—and there are things you do not discuss 
with fathers—no one in the world understood her like 
Rivkah, and no one had such seductive tales to tell of 
bright days and brighter nights in Kiev and Odessa. 

And it was all so thrilling, getting there, wandering 
about with Rivkah, getting back home again—Serra 
Golda’s daughter. 

She had already lied to her father once that day, lied 
by inference at least. She drew her long loose shawl 
about her finery and rapped at the door with her 
knuckles. 

“Who is it?” came a voice from the further side. 

“It’s me, Leah!” 

There was a glad noise like hens clucking. And a 
shriller, sweeter noise—Dina, Henkah’s little sister, a little 
black-eyed creature of four or five whom Leah loved 
devotedly. At least Dina was not in bed yet. 

Henkah hurled herself upon her cheeks, left, right, left, 
right, then plumb upon her lips. 


44 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


“Léanu, what for a gladness it is! Come in. Not for 
days hast thou shown us a foot!” 

Forth sprawled Dina, crowing. “In, in, a maiden!” 
cried Leah. She seized the child in her arms and hurried 
across the theshold with her. Her shawl slipped as the 
child clutched at it. 

“What for this wonderful dress, and not the Sabbath 
even?” inquired Henkah quickly. 

“Perhaps I put it on even for week-days now? Why 
not?” : 

“Yes, why not? A mother worth half Kravno, her- 
self a lump of gold!” admired Henkah. “Let me take the 
child from you. She will tear open the lovely workings at 
the neck, Léanu my heart.” ; 

Henkah’s adulation without the cool solace of Dina’s 
limbs, the sticky perfection of her tiny fists, would be 
intolerable. “Let a maiden be!” objected Leah. “What’s 
wrong with a maiden?” 

“And yet, tell me, why the festival dress?” wheedled 
Henkah. “A young man,” she flashed suddenly. “Say 
it not, I know! Or the marriage-maker is expected to- 
night?” Her voice hardened under the strain of a double 
jealousy. She was two years older than Leah and the 
marriage-maker had managed to clinch no contract for 
her. And who was this proposing to carry away her 
darling, her Léanu: She laughed herself to scorn. “Of 
course it is not true. In a house like Serra Golda’s is 
it not always a day of festival?” She continued the theme, 
interminably, nauseatingly—the material and spiritual 
felicity of Serra Golda’s household. Slowly Dina’s eye- 
lids fluttered to rest and the long lashes threw their 
shadow on the pale ivory of the child’s cheeks. Quietly 
against Leah’s distracted heart the child’s heart beat. She 


45 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


enclosed the tiny feet in her hands. They made them 
seem in contrast almost as gross as Henkah’s. 

“Hush, the child sleeps!” whispered Leah. 

But neither the speed nor the rumour of the flood 
abated. She had at least fulfilled her word. She had 
been to Henkah. Enough of her. She would scream, 
even with Dina in her arms, if she submitted to these 
oleaginous panegyrics for long. Such a mother, such a 
household, such wealth, such piety, such a clay oven 
that not even Vienna knew its like, such trimmings upon 
the dress, such banquets as they cooked for the Sabbath. 
...At the very acme of her detestation, the pathos 
of the raw, ugly girl struck her like a slap on the cheek. 
She saw Henkah for the first time, looked at her startled. 
A moment later she found herself sobbing and the large 
red face of Henkah nuzzling into her own, inquiringly, 
triumphantly. 

“Let me go!” she shrieked. Dina opened her eyes 
and whimpered. 

“JT understand not!” cried Henkah. “What have I 
done?” 

Leah disregarded her. “Forgive me, Dinele,” she was 
whispering, “I know not what is with me these days!” 
She carried the child over to the bed at the further end 
of the room and kissed her hands and feet. A moment 
later she had shut the door of the cottage behind her. 
A fresh breeze was blowing and she drew her shawl 
tighter about her ears. 

Of course it was Rivkah’s turn now. Leah smiled. 
What would Reb Nochum say at this moment to see 
her sloping away to the abandoned one, the woman 
from beyond the nefarious portal? How much would 
it depreciate the current quotation! She stepped out 


46 


PRE LODE IN ORIG Sy LA 


briskly. As the blood coursed through her body and 
her cheeks tingled, she let her shawl slip down upon 
her shoulders. They would recognize her, would they, 
as she made her way into these dubious parts? Let 
them! She entered the back street behind Yussuf the 
butcher’s. ‘The houses closed in upon her. As they be- 
came more decrepit, they fell away from her again, 
for some of them had rotted down almost to their foun- 
dations. She was outside Rivkah’s house now. No 
lamp was burning. Rivkah was out or had company. 
More probably she had company. Leah bit her lip with 
vexation. Or perhaps—it had been a hot day—perhaps 
she was out taking the air in the pine and larch wood? 
The pines never shrugged their shoulders as she passed 
by. The larches never swept their skirts aside. More 
than once she and Rivkah had walked together into the 
clearings and taken their shoes off among the spilth of 
pine-needles, and sung songs, and sat down upon a felled 
tree and told tales—she and Rivkah together. Rivkah, 
that is to say, sang songs and told tales. Rivkah asked 
nothing more than to touch her hand sometimes or caress 
her forehead. 

Leah was out in the meadows now, almost under the 
shadows of the outpost pines. 

But that was neither shadow nor tree twenty yards 
away from her. No shadow had flesh so potent, no tree 
had arms to crack your ribs and lips to crush yours or 
draw them into their own substance. 

Sergei! She must fly from him! Was there time? 
The lumbering moujik, the foul liar! Had he not said 
that the Chosen Ones sought out a Christian child upon 
the Passover and drank his blood? Her own father, 
gentlest, sweetest of humans, Oh, and so incredibly far 


47 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


away, did her father drink gentile blood? Body of a 
lying dog! She would dig her nails deep, deep into his 
flesh, till the blood gushed upon this black grass. She 
was afraid that she would be convulsed with laughter 
at the fatuity of her attempt at self-deception, before he 
arrived, before his desired lips were upon hers, desired 
these days and nights so intolerably. 

But Sergei was not too late. Gently as any moth’s 
wing that had brushed the pale luminousness of her face 
that evening, the peasant’s coarse lips brushed hers and 
passed them by. Then, like a heavy clot of night, he 
lurched away from her, away into the raven darkness 
of the wood. Her head swam, not as if she had stolen 
and drunk great draughts of wine, but strangely, in- 
sidiously, as if she had placed upon her tongue a minute 
drop of poison that corrupted not her body, but her soul, 
deep down to its hidden Jewish springs. 

“Traitress!”? she said to herself complacently, “pros- 
titute!” She leapt to the unuttered sound of the word 
and flung her hair defiantly. Then she turned her face 
towards the village. “The marriage-maker will have left 
the house of Serra Golda?” she ruminated. “It may be 
yes, it may be no. So be it.” 


48 


CHAPTER THREE 


I 


the first place she added Hinda, a little Jewish girl 

from the village, to the establishment. Nothing 
short of the disappearance of Leah, whether meditated 
in a month or two or in a year, would have induced Serra 
Golda to share her regal responsibilities, however slightly, © 
with a stranger. To Hinda, now fell the weighing out 
- of sugar and the cutting-up into rhomboids, of ingber, 
the peppery sweet compounded from cooked ginger and 
sugar and flavoured by subtle essences which were Serra 
Golda’s own proud secret. Native though the stuff was 
to the colder ghettoes against the German frontier, its 
very name being the corruption of a German word, Serra 
Golda had impregnated it with the ardour of the Ukraine. 
Ingber made the shop almost as popular with the youngest 
generation as the social pleasures to be shared there made 
it among the middle-aged. For that reason it was as- 
sociated in Leah’s mind with frequent indulgences on 
the part of little Dina, scandalously aided and abetted by 
herself; hence she remembered it with a tolerance she did 
not extend towards stock-fish (chomaikehs they called it) 
or dried peas or liver-sausages—those mature substances, 
in a word, out of which her mother had compounded her 
monumental and successful personality. 


49 


l was evident that Serra Golda meant business. In 


DAYS OF VAT O NOEIMEEN TT, 


But it was in the direction of needle and thread, of 
dough to be pinched and twisted into knishehs and 
varennikas, of sweet and sour sauces for fish, that Serra 
Golda in these days turned her daughter’s attention. 
No word passed her lips concerning the gentleman from 
Terkass with whose destiny the destiny of Leah was to 
be interwoven so intimately. But she treated her daugh- 
ter as woman to woman. ‘The process embarrassed Leah 
strangely, for there had been no gradations between 
these conditions of a somewhat protracted infancy and 
a somewhat precipitate womanhood. She concluded that 
her father also had been forbidden speech on the subject. 
What did it matter? Spending most of her time between 
the kitchen and the living-room, strengthening herself 
in those talents she was to lay at the altar of a marriage 
she no more contemplated than the addition of a nose-ring 
to her charms, she saw more of her father these days 
than she had seen for years. He would sit all day in his 
corner, thumbing the accounts and sipping his glass of 
tea with lemon; and when the accounts were over, he 
would take down some large, dog-eared folio from the 
shelf behind his head, and lose himself pitiably in a 
maze of Targum. Not that it took him long to lose him- 
self. He was a scholar of no great depth, and the mere 
weight of the volumes impressed him almost as much as 
their sanctity. He had inherited them from his father 
without his father’s capacity for absorbing them and 
rendering them again in the form of sermons even more 
subtle and unintelligible than themselves. He loved to 
finger them, to turn their crumbling pages, then, when 
evening came, to light two candles at their head, as if they 
were a particularly reverend corpse. Indeed you might 
sometimes see, or Leah might, a large tear rise in each 


50 


IRE ODE IN ROSSI A 


eye and fall luminously upon the page below him, a tear 
of mellow felicity. He was recalling at these moments 
neither his sainted father nor the occasional asperities of 
his wife. He was aware merely that the tea tasted good, 
and the volume of Talmud felt good, and his daughter, 
better than these, sat by the table knitting in the failing 
light. She would come over and make a great to-do 
with a cloth, wiping his face, as if he were a child, as 
indeed he was, but less vocal than most. And she would 
kiss him between the eyes and then return to the table 
demurely. 

Very demurely. She had ceased to trouble herself 
over her perfidy. Or perhaps she felt that they were 
two separate human beings who thus bandied sweet 
pleasantries with her father in the darkening room and, 
upon other evenings, when the lust had come upon her, 
muttered some words about visiting Henkah or some 
other girl friend in the village, and made for the arms 
and the lips which held her captive and cowering as any 
mouse in a trap and exultant as a wild filly by the river- 
banks. When they parted, they made no arrangement 
for meeting again. She trusted, and she was not betrayed 
by it, an instinct which should guide her to him whenever 
she felt the need of him imperious. He had not yet 
demanded the last surrender from her. Perhaps it was 
from this hidden and portentous nobleman whom the 
tattlers on both sides of the river alleged to have fathered 
him, that he had acquired, the harsh youth with heavy 
feet and shoulders like a bullock, this faculty for playing 
with a fire which hitherto had leapt up in him in a de- 
vastating moment and was quenched as soon. Like 
any gallant from a French court of the eighteenth century, 
he knew how to let the flame dwindle until a look of 


Si 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


abject terror came into the girl’s eyes. Then he would 
breathe on it, blow on it, till both their faces were trans- 
figured in its glare. That she was a Jewish girl, than 
whom none, he had gathered, had brighter prospects in 
Kravno or a fairer name, added an even richer flavour 
to the flavours of her smail mouth and silk cheeks and 
her hair’s dusky abundance. He must have seen her 
fondling the child, Dina, in the streets. He would let 
it be seen that not even a frail child’s breath must inter- 
pose between his lips and hers. There was no room for 
Dina, for her mother, her God, in their mouths’ anni- 
hilating union. But the memory of the child provoked 
him to another and more impersonal rancour. He 
remembered now the tiny, immaculate Jewish limbs, 
now certain others, twitching ...as they had been 
rendered to his stubborn imagination, slow to receive an 
impression, incapable of losing it. ‘Then as he crushed 
her to him, it was another passion than lust that whipped 
his cheeks into flame and flowed like molten lead down his 
arms into his finger-tips. ‘Then he was heavy with loath- 
ing for her. ‘Then in the swarthy recesses of his mind he 
heard a Christian child wailing at the eve of the Passover, 
he saw the sacrificial knife making its deliberate patterned 
incisions into the palpitating flesh. Once her hand was at 
his mouth when the sight and sound, like a pestilent 
vapour, were suffusing his stubborn brain. His great 
rock-like teeth met in the pad of flesh below her thumb. 
She screamed, but did not know whether for the pain or 
joy of it. She did not know that his lumbering foot at 
that moment was sullenly aching to press her small white 
face indistinguishably into the woodland floor. Then 
some especial potency of her, the cool fire of her finger-tips 
or the odour of her hair, exorcised his demon. Their 


52 


PRELUDE EN RUSSIA 


abominable love-making turned to fresh adventures upon 
the doomed contracting road. 

She tore a strip from her petticoat to bind her bleeding 
hand, and saw, as she entered the living-room, Eli the 
student bending with her father over a volume of Midrash. 
Once or twice of late he had found his way from the 
yeshiveh to discuss with her father some matter of textual 
exegesis. As the fine-spun reasoning unwound its length 
Reb Yankel shook his head with more and more cordial 
an affirmation. His wits had been outstripped many 
periods ago, but the subtle rhetoric seemed to dull and 
soothe his very ear-drums; so that before half-an-hour had 
passed he heard nothing but a gentle bee-buzzing which 
pleased him almost as much as the sensation of his daugh- _ 
ter’s hands upon his forehead. ‘These rare visits of Eli to 
the house of Serra Golda, spread as they were over a 
period of two or three months, could not pass wholly with- 
out comment. For, apart from those interruptions, he 
had immersed himself even more completely than before 
in the dim life of the yeshiveh. He frequently did not 
trouble to return to his bed at all, and after snatching an 
hour or two’s sleep upon a hard wooden bench, he would 
address himself once more to his books, hour beyond hour, 
dusk and dawn. 

It seemed that some secret eluded him, that he must 
hasten after it, all day, all night, all year, lest death come 
too swiftly and curtail the quest. What did he seek? He 
did not know. Perhaps in this forgotten commentator 
there was some inkling of it. . Yellow page upon yellow 
page flapped like ceremonial banners down the avenues 
of his mind. Deep and long he pursued the investigations 
of the Jewish alchemists of Arabia and Spain. How to 
achieve gold from a transmutation of base metals. But 


53 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


he knew he must labour with subtler instruments than 
crucibles and retorts. His brain itself must be his mortar. 
With the pestle of logic he must disintegrate the crude 
stuff of his thoughts and the thoughts of those that had 
preceded him, into their finer elements. Amongst these 
he might isolate spiritual gold, the finest, God. 

Reb Yankel nodded. Reb Yankel clapped his hands. 
Serra Golda smiled pleasantly. Did not his presence, de- 
nied elsewhere, lend her household any further sanction 
it might need? The gypsy cascades of her earrings 
jingled. Had a neighbour said that Leah... Eli... 
that she must give heed? That, at all events, was com- 
fortably settled. Reb Nochum, the marriage-maker, was 
leading his negotiations towards a highly satisfactory 
close. Besides, the young people, had they even an eye 
to each other? Leah no more regarded Eli, nor Eli Leah, 
than if each were a chair or table. 

Excepting this evening when Leah came in with a strip 
of flannel, all sticky with blood, bound about her hand. 

“Leah, what is the matter with thee?” 

“Nothing, mother.” 

“Leah, why so pale?” 

“Nothing, mother.” 

“Thy hand, what is with thy hand?” 

“O this, mother, this!” They were both conscious that 
Eli’s eloquence hung snapped in mid-air. The young man 
was turned towards her, his eyes full of anxiety and fore- 
boding. 

_ “My hand, mother? A dog bit it as I stroked it coming 
down the street!” 

Yeb Yankel sprang from his chair. 

“Daughter mine, daughter mine, go and wash it in hot 


54 


PRE ODE SIN ORO SSA 


water with soap for scrubbing. Come with me, this 
moment!” 

“A maiden,” said Serra Golda, motioning her to follow 
into her room, “should be older than to play in the street 
with gentile dogs.” 

She washed the hand carefully and laid a poultice 
against it. Business took a brisk turn. She passed into 
the shop and out again. Eli took up once more the tale of 
sacred study. Then the time of meyeriv, the evening 
service, was at hand. Reb Yankel passed into the inner 
room to pick up a scarf, Serra Golda was entertaining a 
customer, Leah and Eli were alone in the room. 

The young man strode over to her. She felt his hands 
close like steel about her wrists. She looked up aston- 
ished. He had seemed to be a mere wraith, a thing of © 
spirit which had loosely put on flesh. She saw his dark 
eyes like a beast’s stricken with fright. There was no hint 
in them of their eternal preoccupation, of the eluding 
secret. 

“Little maiden,” he whispered, “little Jewish daughter. 
Oh, take care, take care. My heart breaks.” 

Reb Yankel was fumbling behind the door at the 
handle. The queenly step of Serra Golda was advancing 
into the room. 

“So you leave us for the evening service now, Reb Eli?” 
she asked. 

Les, itegets, late.” 

“The Above One protect you! Whenever you come, 
Reb Eli, what an honour for a Jewish house!” 

“The Above One protect us all!” 

“Tt will do no harm,” said Reb Yankel, “if thou wilt 
wash that hand again, Léanu!” 


55 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


“Leave it a time, the poultice must do its work!” said 
Serra Golda. “If there is poison it will draw it out. So 
may the poison be drawn out of the flesh of all sons and 
daughters of Israel!” 

The two,men withdrew, Serra Golda following them. 
A sensation in her bones, so fundamental was it, told 
Serra Golda that a customer was at hand. The sense of 
premonition in smaller and larger affairs had always been 
of the greatest use to her. 

Saving in this manner of the sale of two candles. No 
more profitable demand than that was made upon her as 
she followed the two men into the shop. Her premonition 
failed her that night in this matter of the two candles. 
She would have need, soon enough, to dispose of more 
candles than these. 


II 


How much did he know? How much did he know? 
How much did he know? The question pounded at 
Leah’s brain. She had one moment of swift, unpitying, 
unaccusing self-vision. She remembered how, when he 
had saved her from outrage among the reeds and willows 
by the water, her preoccupation had been that he, most of 
all human beings, must know nothing of the shame which 
held her motionless and desirous while her despoiler ad- 
vanced upon her. She realized how deep, even from that 
obloquy, she had descended. Her concern now was not 
that he knew, but how much he knew. Then a spasm of 
fury seized her. What did he mean by nosing about like 
a fox among her affairs? Who was he to maintain a 
moral supervision over her? And whence, she asked her- 
self odiously, did the sacred Eli get his facts? Did he not 
: 56 


PRELO DE PNORUSSIA 


spend his twenty-four hours between the yeshiveh and the 
synagogue, passing from one sanctified portal into the 
other? Did he too slope into the woods at evening seek- 
ing a livelier diversion, he than the Talmud, she than 
grocery and knitting? ‘The woods at evening. ... The 
woods at evening... . Her taut body unstiffened. The 
words were more than words to her, more than the quiet 
noises of trees or the sky’s grey cloak. Once again her 
blood ignited like a heap of straw and her mind rocked in 
the delirious bewilderment of paradox. Ribbed like an 
oak, gentle as grass. Like an ox in his gait, like a cat in 
his caresses. Sergei! 

That night in her bed she laid herself prone, a naked 
sacrifice in the palm of Moloch under the towering 
thought of him. Nothing was withheld. No secret of his 
she did not investigate nor of her own she did not profane. 
She knew that whatever slavery her body might be subject 
to, it could be nothing more than a symbol of her spirit’s 
more vicious and more fundamental slavery. She real- 
ized, for the first time so clearly, that this thing which had 
seized her was precisely an insanity of her senses, infil- 
trated by no most minute spiritual influence. She gloated 
over her degradation. Her fingers under the coverlet pur- 
sued each contour of his body. A smile lay upon her face 
as she slept, like the smile upon the face of Astarte’s 
priestess in the vicious closes of her Erycinian temple. 

Next morning when she rose, still her smile lay about 
the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were drowsy as if 
some opiate kept them so. When her mother said once 
and again, “Leah, what is it this morning? ‘Thou are not 
awake. ‘Thy father prays so slowly, one might think he 
sings psalms for the dead. Hinda has not come and it 1s 


nine-clock. What a black day is this?”—she did nothing 
ae 


DAY OF VAT ONCE NIEIN ST: 


more than smile back stupidly at her mother, having un- 
derstood not a word. It was only when Serra Golda came 
over to her and shook her by the shoulders that she al- 
lowed the words to penetrate the mists that enveloped her. 

“Go, Leah, I have told thee or not? Go and find out 
what is with Hinda. A shop, there is no greater in 
Kravno or in T'erkass even, can one unhelped woman look 
after it, and a daughter and a husband to support, much 
use are they? ‘T'wo hours late she is; tell her if she comes 
again late by five minutes, we employ another maiden. 
As for thy father, look at him in the corner there, how 
long will he take with his praying this morning? A good 
Jew says each prayer sharp and clear, separately, like a 
brilliant—yes, that is true. But he must let the accounts 
of his wife’s business go to ruin by taking twice as long as 
any rabbi, that is not written in the passage.” 

Leah cast a glance towards her father, sitting in the 
corner with his phylacteries wound round his forehead and 
naked left arm. He almost invariably went to the syn- 
agogue for the morning services, but he spent more time 
there than was convenient on a day when the traveller 
from Kiev was due with his monthly visit; so that this 
morning he had been requested to recite the service at 
home. On these days Serra Golda and her assistant were 
busy counting up unsold stock in the shop and Reb Yankel 
busy with the books in the living-room. It seemed likely 
that he would distinguish himself less than usual that 
morning. Leah tried to catch his eye, although she knew 
that a good Jew must not be distracted from his colloquy 
with God. What were a father, a daughter, in the scale of 
such august company? She succeeded for one moment. 
He smiled at her, then nodded his head in warning and 
reproof, 


58 


ee UD TONG ROO SO a 


She made her way down the street towards Hinda’s 
house. It was useless, of course. She had already 
warned Hinda that if she ate so many raw pshenichkes 
when Serra Golda’s back was turned—pshenichkes were a 
kind of maize which only moujiks ate raw—not only 
would she be found out sooner or later, but they would 
give her acute pains. Hinda had evidently taken an 
overdose yesterday. A niggling, bilious little creature at 
best, she was down with an attack of colic. 

Leah found she had guessed rightly and delivered a 
small but virtuous homily. Then she turned again to re- 
port the situation to her mother and fabricate a more dis- 
creet origin for Hinda’s indisposition. Things slight as 
this, and slighter, held the forefront of her mind. Vast | 
clouds and mountains loomed in its background. The 
more minutely therefore, she endeavoured to occupy her- 
self with tiny familiar things: the baker, she hoped, had 
not forgotten her father’s favourite breakfast-cake that 
morning, the cake sprinkled with grain. She herself 
would have to be busy in the shop to-day in Hinda’s ab- 
sence. Should she put on the red apron spotted with 
white or the blue-striped apron? 

How the tendons stood out, like carved bars of blue 
steel, between his wrist and his elbow... . 

Would the traveller from Kiev be the man who came 
usually, or the perky small-nosed little fellow who had 
once or twice taken his place? Perhaps it ought to 
be the red apron spotted with white. The blue one 
didn’t suit her half so well, and the strings weren’t big 
enough to tie properly. Perhaps she had better say 
ear-ache. She would have to make an opportunity some 
time during the day to cut back to Hinda and request 
her to tell the same tale when she returned to-morrow. 


oye) 


DAY OF ATONE VCE Net 


His neck stood upon his shoulders like the trunk of 
a tree upon its roots. His hands about her waist, his 
mouth upon her mouth. ... 

The lining was coming loose inside her father’s skull- 
cap. She had promised to see to it the day before yester- 
day. ‘To-day there would be no chance. 

To-day there would be no chance. 

Here was home. Here was a woman standing out- 
side the door at the side of the house. It was her mother, 
speechless, waving her hands. Her mouth was a small 
black hole. Words could not issue from it, nothing but 
a sharp, quick whistling. All her great bosom heaved. 
Her eyes were large with fright. Her floridity had ebbed 
from her till her face was yellow paste. Then words 
came. 

“Thy father! Thy father! Thy father! Léanu, our 
child!” 

Leah stood regarding her curiously. Who was this 
woman? Her mother, had she thought? What did the 
woman want? Then more piteously than a child with 
a smashed bone, the woman wailed, “He is dead! He 
is dead!” 

She was aware that women were gathering towards 
them from every corner of the street. Their feet were 
pressing behind her. But there was calm in the inner 
room where her father sat on his chair in the corner, 
the phylacteries on his forehead and arm, and his coat, 
supported only from the right shoulder, dragging towards 
the floor. His neck was twisted queerly to one side 
and his mouth was open. 

The dead man’s daughter said not a word. She stood 
there so impassive that the women crowding behind her 
paused. So she stood for some minutes. ‘The sound of 

60 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


Serra Golda wailing in the street seemed to come from a 
place leagues removed from this. 

“Dead!” the women heard. “Dead!” But she did not 
hear. “He was mafsig in the middle of his praying. He 
broke in upon his praying and cried to me. Never since 
his bar-mitsvah has he done so. Oi, oi, o1! Oi, o1, o1! 
‘I am ill! Serra Golda! he cried. And I went up to 
him, and there was a noise in his throat, and his head fell 
forward. And I lifted his head. Dead he was, dead, 
dead. Oi, oi, o1! Oi, o1, o1! Dead, dead!” 

But only the women nearest to her wailed to her wail- 
ing. Upon those that had Leah in sight a spell had 
fallen. The girl had not moved an eyelash, her breast 
was still as if craven from stone. She stood there like 
one buried upright ina tomb. From far overhead, illimit- 
ably far overhead, where the enormous blue sky dwindled 
into one point of blackness, descended the noise of earth 
shovelled upon her coffin. She turned away from the 
spectacle of her father, grotesquely, mechanically, as if 
she were more dreadfully dead than he. She turned 
towards the women in the doorway. She spoke. Her 
voice was a hollow hooting like a nameless bird in a field 
of desecration. 

“I!” she said. “I it was! It was I that slew him!” 
Then she screamed suddenly. So a fiend screams in hell. 
She raised her bound hand to her teeth and tore the strip 
of cloth away. Then she dug her teeth deep into the 
place where other teeth had bitten not long ago. 

“Behold, women of Israel, the mark of the beast and 
the beast!” She fell at their feet like a sapling blasted 
by lightning and overwhelmed. 


61 


CHAPTER FOUR 


teriously out of ensanguined skies upon the middle 

and upper reaches of the Dnieper. She had been 
a child then, but she remembered how certain learned men 
had come from great cities to study this calamity. It 
was in the time of blossom, but cherry and pear and 
apple alike rendered to the sky affrighted blossom of 
blood, And there was no green grass. But a great op- 
posed wind from the north-west had come. Rain fol- 
lowed. Grass was green again. 

But they had told her of a black dust that came down 
perennially in the great cities of England and America, 
where there were chimneys taller than many many men 
put together, higher than three times the church in 
Prijni over the river. In these places, they said, there 
was no green grass nor trees in blossom. The black 
dust sifted upon hair and lips and hands until children 
had the semblance of greybeards and old men were dead 
long before they died. The rain that slipped from the 
dusky womb of the clouds was a grey ichor in mid-air 
and did no more when it had descended than distribute 
into a level monochrome all that uncleanness. 

Black dust sifting down upon her, but deeper than 
hair and lips and hand. Sifting down through the pores 
of the skin till the heart moved so faintly in the thicken- 
ing blankets which encased it that a glaze was upon her 

62 


OF there had been a red dust sifting down mys- 


RIVED EN ENT RU SSA 


eyes, and her lips were not more scarlet than her cheeks. 

The coffin lay upon trestles in the living-room. Over 
it a black sheet drooped. They swung it aside and lifted 
the coffin-ld, bidding the dead man’s wife and daughter 
look upon him for the last time. The wife looked and 
fell back among the women whimpering like a puppy. 

“And thou, Léanu!” moaned the women. “He is wait- 
ing for thee!” 

But if the black dust combing the air like a torrent 
dispersed into a vapour of black lawn was so thick that 
a body’s eyes could not see? And if the soul’s eyes were 
so impious that they dared not look? 

She stared away towards the blank wall, hunched 
upon the floor, her hands clasped under her knees. 

“Sit upon a stool,” said the women. “Upon a low > 
stool in the time of mourning it is not forbidden to sit.” 
But she did not move from the ground. Hour beyond 
hour she sat there, saying not a word, seeing nothing, 
hearing only the black dust fret and whisper down the 
starless concave. 

“Come, Léanu!” the women implored. “In ten mo- 
ments they will carry him away to the House of Eternity. 
He has no son to say the prayer of the dead for him. 
There is no son to say kaddish. ‘Thou, his daughter, wilt 
thou not look once only, a last time?” 

She did not move. How dared she move? One by 
one the bones cracked with anguish and the tendons 
snapped. The yearning that was upon her was more 
than the yearning of the flower in the bulb or the drown- 
ing man sunken into deep water, to gain the air. To 
look upon those eyes and lips which were hardly more 
quiet when he was living than now that he was dead. 
To heal her mouth, scorched and blasted in hell-fire, 

63 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


upon the silken pallor of his brows. Must he carry away 
into the tomb till the earth split the indignity of her 
prostituted lips, must she betray him once more and for 
ever with her nameless perfidy? She did not move. 

“Tell her,’ they whispered to the mother. “Bring 
her over to her father. Is her heart stone? Or is she 
too dying? Go, bring her. It will be too late.” 

The tears streamed down Serra Golda’s cheeks in an 
unceasing flood and her breast heaved gustily. 

“Come,” she implored, wringing her hands. “He loved 
thee better than me. ~More thy father he was than my 
man. Come, thou wilt let him go? I say, thou wilt not 
let him go! Do not permit it, God!” 

A frenzy came upon her. She seized her child by 
the shoulders and dragged her cold, impassive bulk over 
the floor towards the dead man; until of a sudden the 
coldness and impassivity of this flesh that was her flesh 
passed like a current through her arms. She relaxed 
her limp burden and recoiled from her. 

“Women of Israel!” she cried. “There is a shame 
upon this house!” 

“Hush, hush!” they bade. “How canst thou speak 
so and he lies there listening?” 

Then for the first time for many hours the girl spoke. 
“Verily, verily, women, she speaks truth.” Her voice 
was like a dying bird’s in a snare. So forlorn it was, so 
utterly broken, that the sobbing of the women in the room, 
which had been tumultuous, deepened into a low wailing 
not to be borne. 

The girl went on. “I would speak to God, but I am 
unclean and dare not. I would look upon my father, 
but I am unclean and dare not. Mother mine, little 
mother!”—her hands twitched violently towards her 


64 


PRELODE INO RGSSI A 


mother’s knees but wrenched themselves away before 
a finger-tip had come to rest—‘“let me not touch you till 
I am worthy. Do not cast me away. You others, be 
kind to me, though you should stone me dead.” 

Henkah detached herself from the dark mass of swaying 
and weeping women and pressed the pale girl to her 
bosom. “Léanu, Léanu, there is no one we love more 
than thee. Speak not so. If thou hadst robbed or 
murdered, we should love thee more.” 

“Better,” said Leah, “that I had robbed or murdered.” 

“Here is Dinélé. Take her in thy arms. All yester- 
day and all night and all to-day she has been crying to 
be with thee, knowing thee unhappy. Take her.” 

“Dinélé,” she said, “little Dinélé least of all! Let 
no child come close to me!” A tear rose from her dull © 
eyes and lay upon the parched desert of her face. It 
was the precursor of no healing shower. The fountain 
was sealed again. Once more she clasped her hands 
about her knees and her chin dropped upon her breast; 
once more her eyes stared upon the wall, and the noise 
of hammering and beating was dim through the sifting 
of dust. There was a trampling of heavy feet as they 
bore him away, a receding of all the dark tumult towards 
the outer threshold and the street. A loud shriek from 
beyond the open doors essayed to force an entrance into 
her brain. It bore her no intellectual message. But her 
heart knew it was the cry of her mother, the flesh 
which was her flesh. Her head drooped upon her breast. 

The male mourners were returning from the burial 
and the funeral oration that had been uttered there, and 
the women were setting the low stools for them. Here 
they should eat and drink and discuss the virtues of the 
dead man, slowly, ceremonially; then, when evening was 


65 


DAY O}, SATO NIM EAN 


at hand, the evening service would be intoned and Eli 
would pronounce the kaddish for him, for the dead man 
that had no son. 

Three times a day, for seven days, the congregation 
would come in and hold the services, three times a day 
would Eli intone the kaddish. 'There would be work 
enough on hand at Serra Golda’s. But upon this day at 
least the widow and orphan must not be allowed to touch 
even a spoon. ‘The traditional funerary food had been 
brought in by the neighbours, and now that the mourners 
had returned from the cemetery, the widow and orphan 
also must be induced to take a drop of tea, a fragment 
of the hard ring of bread called bagle, a morsel of hard 
egg. For that was the custom—to sprinkle some grains 
of ashes as a sign of mourning over these two circular 
foods that were a symbol of eternity. Even as David 
had fared, they said, after he had mourned and wept for 
Saul and his son Jonathan and had fasted until the 
evening. 

There was a shuffling of stools as the mourners took 
their places. There was a rattling of glasses, a hiss of 
steam from the samovar. 

The sound seemed to spurt into Leah’s brain. She 
blinked her eyes and shook her head as if to throw off 
a deadly sleep that had been engulfing her. She saw 
one woman busied with the boiling of the eggs. Another 
had made the tea. Some one was approaching her with 
a plate of food. 

“Léanu, my child. Thou must eat. Long enough hast 
thou fasted.” 

She rose. ‘There was a slow formalism in her move- 
ments and in her voice. She seemed to be reading out 
of some book of antique ritual. 


66 


PRE ODETINAIRUS SLA 


“No one shall attend upon me this day, for there is 
no one here whose shoes I am worthy to lace. Let me 
take food around to the congregation, for I will be their 
handmaiden, should they permit me. Let me wait upon 
them, I pray you, I pray you.” 

There was a subdued excited whispering among the 
women, for the thing she asked was against all use. The 
old men gravely nodded their heads together and mur- 
mured. Eli looked upon her, dumb with wretchedness. 
Serra Golda impotently beat her hands together. Was 
there to be no limit to the strangeness of the girl’s be- 
haviour this heart-breaking day? Reb Chiyel, the town 
rabbi, nodded his head significantly towards Rochel, the 
bed-maker’s wife. The cemetery had been exposed and. 
draughty. His oration had been eloquent and strenuous. 
He was hungry. 

“Let it be!” his gesture said. “It is not forbidden 
in the passage. ‘The tea grows too strong in the samovar.” 

The girl wandered wide-eyed, pallid, methodical, from 
guest to guest. 

“For thee, Reb Elijah, two slices of lemon?” 

“For thee, Reb Eli, shall butter be smeared upon the 
bagles?” 

She seemed like some young priestess who has just 
emerged from her novitiate and makes fearful oblations 
from altar to altar in the temple of her gods. That 
service performed, she sat down upon the ground again 
and resumed her unseeing vigil. 


67 


CHAPTER FIVE 


I 


66 o not perturb thyself, Serra Golda,” said Rochel, 
eyeing the egg she had almost made up her 


mind to buy as punctiliously as if tragedy had 
not darkened these portals only two months ago. But 
would it have abated the fervours of her husband, Berel 
the bed-maker, if all three members of the household of 
Reb Yankel, peace be upon him, had been found in their 
beds that very morning with their throats slit—and his 
wife had permitted herself to place a bad egg before him? 

“Tt will pass, Serra Golda, it will pass. Such a melan- 
choly is not natural. Never a smile seen upon her face, 
nor a light in her eye, the poor birdkin. But she is young 
and a female, and not even a brother left in the house. 
Female flesh is not happy if there is no male flesh to rub 
against. So said old Malkah only last night, and if she 
does not know, who shall? Has she not had three hus- 
bands, and she is seventy, and they now talk of a fourth?” 

“It frightens me,” said Serra Golda. “Gold is not 
better than the maiden. I have but to throw an eyelash 
and she is at my feet, working in the shop, in the kitchen. 
I do not speak even. She was not like that.” 

“Male flesh, I say, Serra Golda, male flesh. That is 
what you both need. Say not no. A Jewess like thee, 
a thousand roubles in thy pocket and there is no Jew 

68 


PEE ODE TNIV RU Sis id 


in the whole province will not add another thousand. 
Then a shop can be opened in Kiev, should it so please 
you, a palace is not bigger. And for Léanu, it is true, 
is it not true, that there is talk of a match with the rich 
miller’s son out of Terkass?” 

“People will talk,” replied Serra Golda with some 
complacency. “What for are tongues?” 

“Let then the wedding take place after Chanukah. 
How much didst thou say the green olives?” 

“For thee, Rochel, so cheap let me give them thee 
rather. Thou dost not understand what is with the child. 
She came up to me at the night of the new moon, and 
asked ‘Mother, is it not true that thou wishest me to wed 
with Avrom the son of Zcharyah, the miller’s son out of | 
Terkass?? Her father, peace be upon him, must have 
said the name. Not once it crossed my lips, not once. 
Why needs a maiden know: I said, ‘Léanu, when the 
year of mourning is over, perhaps the very next day 
shall be thy wedding. Shall thy father’s line pass from 
the earth? Thy next birthday, thou shalt have seventeen 
years. Thou art growing old, daughter.” And she said, 
‘Mother mine, little mother, when God has made me clean. 
Wilt thou not wait? Shall I place a lump of defilement 
in my husband’s arms?’ ” 

“Tell me, Serra Golda, may I speak words of frankness 
with thee?” 

“If thou shouldst not, whither should I turn for help, 
a lonely widow?” 

“That accursed moujik she talked of, a cholera seize 
him fi! 

“To whom has she not talked of him, bringing dis- 
credit upon this house? I say, ‘Close thy lips, thou 
hast said it. Why again and again? Who does not 


69 





DAY OF ATONEMENT 


know?’ She replies, ‘When God has made me clean.’ 
What shall be done?” 

“But there was nothing between them, shall I so say 
it, nothing?” 

“So should I live and all Jewish children. They met, 
yes. They ... they kissed . . . a thousand black devils 
cut his lips into slits and place salt in them. She has 
said there was no more. She can be believed. No rabbi 
in the province can be more believed. Should I so live, 
could she but once tell a small lie again, Jewish mother 
as I am that wish it, I should be happy. But she is 
mad. ‘In the spirit,’ she says, ‘in the spirit was every 
abomination. Lead me into the market-place! Let the 
people of the town stone me!’ I ask you, Rochel. How 
shall my head endure it?” 

“Be content, it will pass. If Reb Yankel, peace be 
upon him, was so much more to her even than her own 
mother guessed, how should not his death affect her so?” 

“But a limit, Rochel, a limit to everything. The Above 
One knows, I come from no abandoned household Ki 

“Ta, tsa, tsa!’ objected Rochel. 

“If the Above One was not honoured in our house- 
hold, where in all Russia? Thou knowest, Rochel, who 
better? But to be so frum as that maiden has been 
since her father’s death, peace be upon him... .” 

“Never in all Kravno was Jewish daughter so pious. 
Such frumkeit, she is an angel, not a creature. That I 
know also, Serra Golda. Let her marry. Let it be ex- 
pended upon her children. The Above One knows, in 
these days, such a mother, herself the daughter of such a 
mother, what might she not do for Yidishkeit. She will 
be a credit in thy old days! May my children’s children 


grow up so!” 





70 


BREE DEVINGR US SA 


“If there should be any waking her into cheerfulness 
for one small moment even. ... Lo, who is this that 
comes? Ah, thy son, Rochel. How goes it, Kankel? 
No evil eye befall him, he will be taller than his father 
by next Lag Beomer. A Kankelé would like a piece 
of ingber, yes!” 

The flood of Rochel’s garrulity dried upon her lips. 

“What is it, son?” she stammered. “Thy father, he 
calls?” 

The grubby seven year youngster winked one large 
black eye, screwing it up so tight you might have thought 
it would never disengage itself again. He lifted a finger 
to his nose. 

“His gall simmers,” said he. 

“These olives,” his mother cried. “Take them in thy 
hand, and this bag of lentils.’ She assumed the basket of 
eggs and passed towards the door cloudily. 

“Male flesh,” she ejaculated at the threshold. ‘“With- 
out male flesh is every misfortune. Once married, a 
womans. 5)’ 

But the remembrance of the unhappy condition of her 
husband’s gall curtailed her description of the felicities 
incidental to the state of marriage. 

“Hinda,” cried Serra Golda into the store-room ad- 
joining. “Thou wilt be till next week there weighing 
out the flour? What for I pay thee monthly good gold? 
Such a year on thy father’s father!” 


II 


The piety of Leah, daughter of Serra Golda, passed 
into a byword in all those parts. Such austerities as she 
practised, such infinitesimal refinements of ritual as she 


71 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


feverishly hunted down and meticuiously performed, 
were hardly associated even with the plainest of the 
plain old women, who had escaped or exhausted the 
pleasures of this world and had no other preoccupation 
than to provide for the rewards of the next. But despite 
her pale cheeks and slight body that grew paler and 
slighter as the months proceeded (and these were qualities 
which did not usually pass for beauty in their eyes) it was 
felt that no girl was her peer. Her beauty made her piety 
so much the more remarkable. There was one Rivkah 
and another, and maidens far more temperate than these, 
from whom they learned how frequent was the divorce 
between these two qualities. No rabbi’s wife, or what 
was more notable, no rabbi’s widow, no aged rebbitsin 
shuffling half-blind between her home and the synagogue, 
exceeded Leah in the zealous tortuousness of her piety. 
There were rumours that once there had been some 
dubious relations between the girl and some moujik 
from Prijni; the atrocious Sergei even, a few said, who 
Jurked more villainously than ever before in the further 
ends of the village to fling obscenity at a passing Jew 
and the holy object he might be carrying, praying-shawl 
or phylacteries. It was a farcical slander. It could be 
believed more easily of some withered creature that 
limped and squinted, than of this girl whose face was a 
white lamp. Had she been heard herself to say such a 
thing? Nothing more than one of those desperate il- 
lusions from which the most pious of the pious regularly 
suffered. Had not old Reb Pinchas sworn, so frum he 
was, that he lay with the devil’s wife nightly, and he was 
ninety-two years old at the time? 

It needed subtler understanding than most possessed 


72 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


to divine the melancholy which clung closer to the girl 
than her own skin. If they divined it, it may have oc- 
curred to them that the ferocity of her piety had some 
connection with it. Not that she would have discarded 
her piety if her melancholy might have been assuaged 
and annulled in its complex exercise, for it had become 
as much part of her functions as breathing. But she 
might have regarded it almost as if God had intended 
it to be a loving-bond between his children and himself 
rather than a rod which they must inflict upon themselves 
for his own inscrutable grim satisfaction. 

Yet as she walked along the streets and men turned 
round to gaze upon her, she felt obscurely that more 
must be rendered to God, much more, than had been > 
rendered. She remained woman enough, for all her 
perpetual exile and mortification, to realize with dismay 
why they turned so. And if a goy passed her, a gentile 
from Prijni, he made the talk of realization more easy. 
Him, Sergei, she did not meet. The orbit of her wander- 
ing was circumscribed by home and synagogue, and 
he had not intruded upon it. He inhered in her brain 
not as a distinguishable figure, not even as a name, but 
as a foul horror from whose focus the world’s blackness 
spread to the horizon’s rim. 

All that must be rendered to God had not been 
rendered. 

She stood at gaze before her mirror, noting with per- 
verse lugubrious joy how her breast seemed fallen in and 
what ashen hollows lay under her eyes. Her fastings 
and austerities were not of no avail in the shriving of that 
flesh that had erred so monstrously. Her hair foamed 
darkly below her waist. As she lifted her hands behind 


73 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


her neck to seize a great tress in each and bind them 
together, she perceived it had never become her so well; 
never had it been so full nor of so royal a sheen. For one 
moment she found herself luxuriating sadly in its beauty. 
Then she dropped both tresses suddenly as if they had 
scorched her hands like red-hot wires. Must she wait 
until marriage before their infamous allure was shorn 
from her? No wonder that men still threw unholy glances 
upon her, unholiest of women, whilst still she permitted 
' this tire of Jezebel. She knew that married Jewish 
women removed their-own hair soon after their weddings 
that they might provoke no lust in the hearts of alien men. 
Bound in the stern chain of wedlock they did not need to 
exert mere sensuous fascination upon their menfolk, who 
demanded from them austerer satisfaction. Her mother 
like the rest bore a sheitel upon her head, a black shin- 
ing wig that lay close upon the head. Must she 
wait till the time of her own marriage till this snare of 
Satan was shorn from her—if ever God deigned so to 
purify her with his fires that she might dare to present 
herself to some honourable youth who feared God? Let 
him be some tailor’s apprentice. How dare she aspire 
after a more exalted husband? For how many moments 
would Avrom, the rich miller’s son out of Terkass, tolerate 
the thought of her, when once he learned of her rotten- 
ness? For if he had not already learned, God would not 
permit her to pass under the bridal canopy before she 
herself had told him the whole shameful truth. 

This evil lure that sprouted from her head like a 
snake’s crest must go from her. The thought took pos- 
session of her brain and body. As she combed it in the 
morning it seemed that her hair spluttered with tiny 
wicked noises. At night it lay on the pillow beside her 


74 


TeRIPIAULII ETE NUR U Sod A 


like an evil companion whispering. It must be cast 
away from her into the darkness which had bred it. 

She did not know what attitude her mother might 
take up towards her resolve. Serra Golda had shown 
some intolerance lately of her fastings and prayings and 
self-impositions. 

“A maiden remains a maiden, not a male. What for 
wilt thou pretend thyself a man to be saying the Torah 
like this over and over again and repeating the prayers 
longer hours than a rabbi? Kosher meat is kosher meat, 
but where says it that a woman must beat her breast like 
a madwoman if the meat be one-tenth of a second more 
than half an hour in water, one-tenth of a second more 
than one hour in salt? Torah evening, Torah morning. _ 
Another Eli wilt thou be? Dost thou understand a single 
word?” 

The thought that she might be pandering to the sin 
of spiritual pride kept her awake and weeping for three 
successive nights. Then she took her burden over to 
old Mimmy Cheikah, daughter, widow and mother of 
a rabbi, the women’s repository of lore and ritual, an 
inexhaustible reservoir of antique talmudic ordinances 
which even the profoundest male talmudists in Kravno 
had forgotten or were ignorant of. From her she learned 
that the mechanical repetition of the hallowed Hebrew 
words of scripture had their own huge potency even if 
you understood not a single syllable of their meaning 
and were never likely to. Mere comprehension was 
almost an impertinence. 

“What for,” complained Serra Golda, almost fiercely, 
“when thy father, peace be upon him, and thy mother, 
waited six hours after cow’s meat before taking milk 
food into the mouth and three hours after poultry meat, 


75 


DAY OF ARONEMENT 


what for their daughter must wait nine hours after cow’s 
meat and six hours after poultry meat? Who commands 
such a thing?” 

For indeed from the point of view of housekeeping 
and synchronic meals Leah’s zeal had its inconveniences. 

“Thou must wash thy hands before and after using 
meat cutlery, before and after using milk cutlery. Then 
one of these in-between washings is a luxury, no? I 
am a poor widow.” (The forlornness of her state was 
now one of Serra Golda’s main commercial assets, being 
at least as efficacious as her earlier competent geniality.) 
“Are there not things in a Jewish shop and household 
beyond Torah and hand-washings for a female woman to 
take in hand?” 

No, she could not determine in advance what attitude 
her mother might take up towards her imminent self- 
spoliation. Would it not be simpler to present her with 
the thing accomplished? When she passed from the house 
one afternoon with a pair of blunt shears concealed under 
her shawl, her eyes were clouded with no consciousness 
of double-dealing. There was more light in them than 
had invaded those obscure orbs for many days. But it 
was no joyous light of a windy morning sun; an evening 
sun rather, sinking wildly in the desperate west. 

Whither should she go? What friend in all Kravno 
would permit her to perform this rite under her roof? 
None at all. With what specious pitiful arguments 
would they seek to arrest her hand? She found herself 
striding swiftly towards the river, clutching the handles 
of the shears so tightly that they made great weals in 
the delicate flesh. For one moment she paused while 
it seemed that the blood from all her body surged and 
collected into the base of her throat. A violent nausea 

76 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


overcame her. For she knew that there was one place 
only in the wide plains of Russia where she must perform 
her task. It was no place else than the bank of grass 
where, lying naked in the late August noon, he had 
stared upon her and called out with the fierce clamancy 
of flesh, and her flesh had called back again, like a beast 
to a beast in the obscene woods. The evocation of him 
in all his carnal actuality had brought a sweat to her 
forehead. She shivered and swayed, then recovered her- 
self, biting her lip savagely, and made forward again 
for the loathed, lewd place. 

Then had been palpitant summer. Then had the swift 
dragon-flies darted their blue and scarlet fires over the 
singing water. Then had the grasses been velvet and. 
the willow-leaves cut from fine silk. Fit couch for her 
own body’s single nefarious revelry, and the conjoint 
revelry that should have followed. Lord of Israel, the 
revelry that had followed in the lecherous close of her 
own bed where in her mind the grasses hummed lust 
upon this same grass-bank and the willows bent over 
into the simmering steamy water and their bodies lay 
each to each. 

All was autumn now, sere as her own heart. Slowly 
the shears croaked in the loosened loveliness of her hair. 
More and more grotesque she became, her lopped head 
like a pollarded elm. Here the scalp was bare, here a 
bunch of hair still sprouted for four and five inches, 
here a tress still abided in all its sweet length down to 
her waist. A bird flew from the further bank, and seeing 
her, flapped his way back again, crying. The work at 
length was completed. Here and there the shears had 
slipped, making great incisions in her scalp. There was 
a salt taste of blood upon her mouth. | 


77 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


“Lord, God of Israel,” she moaned, “may this blood 
be acceptable in Thy sight!” She lay writhing under the 
wilted branches. Then she gathered what she could of 
the shorn hair and thrust it from her out upon the water. 

“Little father,” she cried, “ask grace for me! Little 
dead father, ask the Above One can He not... .” ‘The 
words were merged into a low, long sobbing, unutterably 
desolate. So she lay there an hour or two, hideous, 
bloody, neither girl nor woman beside the mourning 
water. 


She might easily have covered her head with the shawl 
as she walked back again into the village, for she knew 
that a woman must not walk abroad uncovered. Then 
she might as easily have left it covered with her hair, 
she said. This once, this once only. ... And if men 
threw eyes at her, they would not be the eyes of desire 
she had herself sinfully solicited. Should they mock 
her, how much more had she not merited? She was ap- 
proaching a party of small boys playing a game of nuts 
against the wall. There was Feivel, Hankah’s cousin, 
there was Kankel, son of Rochel. Moisheh had sent 
a well-directed nut against the tawny little pyramid. 
He whooped triumph and swooped upon his spoil. One 
nut had been sent careering towards Leah’s advancing 
foot. She almost trod on it. He lifted his eyes and 
opened his mouth to utter some childish impudence. His 
mouth remained fixed and round like the mouth of a 
bottle. Then the other children caught sight of her. 
None uttered a sound. Suddenly Moisheh ducked as if 
to avoid a blow from a demon escaped out of the woods. 
Then he took to his feet and coursed away like a hare. 


The other children followed, Feivel, Kankel, Shmul, all of 
78 


Po LOD EIN RAG Sis 


them, their nuts forgotten, nothing in their minds but 
that grotesque image, familiar from their earliest mem- 
ories, more dreadfully unfamiliar than nightmare. At 
Yussuf the butcher’s corner a hundred yards away, they 
stopped dead as abruptly as they had started running. 
Then Kankel disengaged himself and disappeared a few 
yards down the side street. Then he reappeared and 
shouted something through the doorways of the adjacent 
houses. More children appeared from one quarter and 
another. They were all talking busily to each other now 
like swallows among eaves. Then, as Leah reached them, 
the twittering was accentuated into a shrill squawk of 
derision. 

“Leah, the meshuggeneh, Leah the madwoman!” 

“Rabbi Leah, Leah the rebbitsin!” 

“She has the melancholy. Poor old Leah!” 

“When there’s a question to ask if a hen’s kosher, ask 
Leah, Leah the rebbitsin!” 

They accompanied her excitedly as she made her way 
home. Henkah came out of a house, holding little Dina 
in her arms. The child caught sight of Leah and stared 
at her for one moment, then burst into a fit of tears. 
Serra Golda might have heard the noise from the street, 
or the whisper might already have reached her. She 
stood waiting at the door as Leah reached home. As the 
bedabbled hideousness of her daughter’s moon-mad ap- 
pearance came more and more starkly into her vision, an 
ugly purple flush started in her cheek and soaked its way 
to her temples and deep down her neck. Her nostrils 
quivered with the desperateness of her wrath. The up- 
per lip twisted away at the corner and revealed one large 
white tooth. 

“Mutterel ...” her daughter started. 


79 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


But the next moment her mother’s hand had descended 
like a whip upon her face. The blow resounded across 
the street. The prints of the finger-tips extended in a 
clear scarlet pattern from the point of her chin to her eye. 

Leah did not quail. The blow seemed rather to 
quicken her dull heart, to light up her eyes with a leaping 
point of pride. A smile, or a smile’s ghost, flickered on 
her mouth for one moment. She looked steadfastly 
towards her mother, then turned her face, so that if she 
desired it her mother might strike the other cheek also. 

How should she have known that she stood there like 
an inanimate symbol of the teaching of the most famous 
of the rabbis? How should she have known it when 
Eli, the profound scholar, the gaon, learned in the Tal- 
mud and all sacred writ, might pursue in ten tortuous 
dialects the obscure thaumaturgisms of the obscurest 
medieval kabbalist, but conceive the luminous Greek 
Talmud composed by his predecessors in the Palestinian 
yeshivehs to be a futile or pernicious quackery? 

Leah, then, as Christ bade, had turned the other 
cheek? But Eli, as Christ did, must stretch his arms 
out upon a cross. Hapless youth and maiden in your 
sequestered village upon the river-bank, among your 
green meadows, under the lee of your pinewoods, the 
years contract, the months are fewer, time is a chain 
of inexorable hours dragging as from a pit of doom the 


doleful day, the Day of Atonement. 


80 


GHAR ETERS TX 


66 oor birdkin!” sighed the women. “Poor bird- 
IP kin!’ They had anticipated it from the very 
day of Reb Yankel’s death, they said, and that 

sad business of the hair-shearing was only a symptom of 
it. ‘There was nothing specific about the malady, nothing 
but profound weakness and a melancholy profounder 
than before. She had hardly taken a bite of food for | 
two weeks, yet when Yom Kippur, the black fast, came, 
she insisted on starting the fast not from the evening, 
but from the noon, of the preceding day. Next day 
she took up her station before dawn in the synagogue, 
hours before the actual day-long service began, the 
service which only ended with the blowing of the ram’s 
horn that evening. Everybody sat down between the 
more important prayers, everybody but Mimmy Malkah 
and Leah. But Mimmy Malkah had been standing 
throughout the length of Yom Kippur for about seventy 
years now and one year more or less would make no great 
difference to her. Her bones creaked equally whether 
she stood or sat or lay down. But Leah started the day 
already looking frail as a phantom and no drop of water 
had touched her lips now for many hours. Several 
times they saw her sway dangerously towards the bench 
and claw at the air with her left hand. In the other 
her prayer-book was tightly clenched. It was only when 
they heard it drop to the ground and found that she 

81 


DAW OSOK, C470 O NERV cial 


did not stoop to pick it up and cover the holy binding 
with the statutory penitent kisses, that they realized she 
had fainted. Her tiny body was huddled between the 
bench and the wall. Somebody reached out an arm and 
prevented her toppling over on to the ground. 

It had taken Serra Golda some time to convince her- 
self that though her daughter was even distressingly 
anxious to perform the slightest request made by her 
mother, she was not going to allow her hair to grow 
again. Realizing that there was no help for it, a sheitel 
was ordered, a smooth mature wig that lay fantastically 
upon her small face and made it seem smaller and 
more pitiful. Those who had not already divined the 
girl’s reason for lopping off her hair had it brought home 
to them by the spectacle of the sheitel. But if it had been 
hoped that that immolation and her Yom Kippur pen- 
ances might have exorcised her conviction of guilt for 
her father’s death and her own sense of infamy, they were 
disappointed. Now and again the tears would be seen 
coursing from her cheeks, and if one asked, “Léanu, what 
is with thee? Why such a child, weeping always? Stir 
thyself! Come now, Léanu!” you would only hear in 
reply some whispered broken self-accusation. Her girl 
friends would attempt to rouse her from her melancholy 
by attempts to carry her away with them on a gust of 
forced laughter. But gradually her sadness became too 
much for them. The laughter died upon their lips. They 
stole away from the room uneasily one after the other. 

She would not permit herself even to take the child 
Dina, whom she had so ioved, into her arms. And 
though the child’s sweet antics would sometimes bring 
a fleeting haunted smile into her face, swift tears followed 
it. Now that there was no man in the household, it 


82 


PRE LOD ESEN (RUS Sih A 


was not easy for Eli to pay a visit. But from time to 
time he came with his mother or his aunt and placed 
himself at Leah’s side and talked with her. He could 
not bring himself to speak in so many words of her 
soul’s sickness, much less either to reprove her for her 
contumacy as some interpreted it, or attempt to lighten 
her heart with an assumed gaiety. But he told her dim 
talmudic tales of potent words and sorcerers, of bright 
presences brought to earth, and for the space of his tale- 
telling the melancholy was not in her eyes; not in their 
centre, at least; withdrawn somewhere into their fringes, 
waiting to slink out of cover again when the evening 
service called Eli away and she was left alone with a dark- 
ness that neither the sun at high noon could dispel nor | 
the holy array of candles on the Sabbath eve. 

He told her again the biblical tales she had been 
familiar with from her infancy, but all tricked out with 
curious elaborations. He told her of the Israelitish wan- 
dering through the desert and what beasts, compounded 
how strangely, confronted them there. He told the gentle 
story of Ruth and the jewelled story of Esther or remem- 
bered some grotesque medieval marvel. But once, de- 
lineating the half-human, half-reptilian demon that had 
battled with a pious Jew for his soul at the door of the 
synagogue in Lodz, he found her crying so desperately 
that he imagined he had been so clumsy as to frighten 
her. He must refrain henceforth, he vowed, from dis- 
coursing upon monsters so formidable. 

He did not guess that a sudden memory smote her 
of the glittering tales told her by Rivkah in the evil days, 
of wine and loose living and painted lips in the great 
cities; and she had listened, saying: “More, more, 
Rivkah, it is still early. Tell me more tales of the dances 

83 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


they dance there and the gay tall men!” He did not 
guess she remembered the unholy fancies which had once 
rioted in her mind, of princes snatching a Jewish maiden 
on to their saddles as they rode by, with feathers in their 
hats and red tassels upon their swords. The last harlotry 
of the spirit it seemed to her. ‘Tears of contrition coursed 
down her cheeks. 

And for that evening the taste of ashes was continu- 
ously in her mouth and the reproach continuously at her 
ears. Though Eli might come again and for an hour the 
gentle insistence of his voice might prevail over those 
other voices, when he went from her they could not be 
stilled. So she pined and dwindled, and though to please 
her mother she would attempt to take food, she had no 
joy in it or anything at all. “The poor soul,” said the 
women, “how long can she last so?” Gentile doctors 
were called in to cure her malady, but they shook their 
heads and said there was nothing to cure or that she 
was beyond curing. Certain of the elder women made 
vegetable ointments to smear over her heart and temples. 
“The evil eye,” they whispered, “the evil eye is upon her.” 
But the medicaments which hitherto had never failed 
with the evil eye or any black enchantment, were of 
no avail. She pined and dwindled. “Before the pass- 
over comes in,” they said, “she will be dead. What 
use? She cannot live without her father, peace be upon 
him. She is not long for this world!” 

She caught up the unuttered sense of their words, un- 
uttered, at least, in her presence or in her mother’s. 

“When I am dead . . .” she whispered to them. 

“Child, child!” they remonstrated. 

“Hush! Let not my mother overhear!” She put her 
finger to her lips. “I have sinned grievously, what daugh- 


84 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


ter of Israel more? But when I am dead, will he not ask 
schuss for me, my father, peace be upon him, will he not 
ask grace? So that when I have stood ten thousands of 
years beyond the doors and again ten thousand and again 
ten thousand they will let me pass through to lie at my 
father’s footstool. When I am dead... .” 

She had passed from the scope, it seemed, of mortal 
ministrations. When she was dead, was her theme, when 
she was dead. 


And then it was that the news was brought from 
Terkass that Moisheh the Good Jew had moved up from 
no one knew whence and was once more curing maladies 
of the bowels and imparting to barren wives the secret 
of fecundity. There was something superb in the sim- 
plicity of his title—der guter Yid, the good Jew, for 
even his bitterest enemies accredited him with miracles, 
with even more miracles than his friends. In the days 
when he had been a zaddik, a holy man among the holy 
sect of the chassidim, somewhere in Galicia, he had borne 
a more exalted title. He was no less than a Baalshem, 
a Master of the Name, like the almost legendary founder 
of the order of the chassidim. And like his predecessor, 
strange portents had accompanied his birth, rare potencies 
resided in the least touch of his fingers. He had, at an 
early age, attained the state of zaddikism, which is a 
species of canonization upon earth, and the devoted ad- 
herents of his sanctity openly avowed that within the 
course of a decade or two Moisheh the Baalshem would 
throw his disguises aside and stand revealed to the world 
as the Messiah’s self. One morning he was found missing 
from the synagogue and would henceforth never allow 
himself to be associated with any particular sect of the 

85 


DAY OF VAT ONEM EN TF 


chassidim or any one synagogue anywhere at all. Various 
explanations were offered for his disappearance. “Master 
of the Name indeed!” howled certain of those same 
chassidim who had once most clearly seen in him the 
actual lineaments of Jehovah which are the theoretic en- 
dowment of the zaddik. “Of the Devil’s Name, yes, 
Master of Abominations!” ‘Then there were the free- 
thinkers, who maintained firmly that nothing more was 
wrong with Moisheh than a sense of humour; he had 
found the prostrations of his votaries so inexhaustibly 
comic that he had repaired to the world’s highways to 
laugh the joke out to its dregs. Certainly Moisheh’s ap- 
pearance lent colour to this particular interpretation. For 
though he was older than any one knew and though his 
face was lost in a thicket of white beard and white brows 
and long, white ear-locks, his cheeks were still red as an 
izvostchik’s, a cab-driver’s. His eyes sparkled with hu- 
mour, and more than once, it was stated, in the middle of 
uttering some incantation or delivering some sombre ex- 
hortation, the words gurgled suddenly in his throat as 
a fiood of laughter overtook them. 

Those whose hearts were most completely given over 
to him vowed that the same voices had called him away 
from his seat of sanctity as had sung over his cradle, in 
the attested hearing of a score of neighbours. They 
were the voices that had instructed him so deeply in all 
the lore of Kaballah out among the meadows and forests 
by his native village, what time his contemporaries had 
acquired but the tenth part of his erudition under the 
exigent discipline of the yeshiveh. Render to all men 
and women, the voices said, the divine powers now spilt 
upon a handful of them. 

“Divine powers!” the enemies of Moisheh sneered. 


86 


PRE ODESINGR U SSL A 


“Children for barren wombs, eh? Children from whose 
loins, eh? Ask Slatta, the wife of Berel the parchment- 
maker. Ask Chayah, and she’s nobody’s wife at all. 
Ask Malkah the milk-woman!” 

“A scandal in Jewry!” the others cried, shaking their 
fists. “An old man, should be long live, of eighty years, 
perhaps a hundred. And these outcasts would say that 
he lives a loose dog’s life like their own! May a cholera 
take them!” 

“He has the black art. Those loins will be fit for twins 
in yet twenty years. The devil will keep them stocked!” 

So that all parties conspired to acknowledge his ex- 
traordinary powers. It was never quite clearly known 
why at this time of Leah’s illness he left Terkass for 
Kravno so suddenly. The sect of his enemies in Kravno 
(for every town and village was divided sharply between 
his friends and enemies, whose one bond of unity was the 
eagerness with which they accepted his ghostly services) 
asserted that there was trouble again with some lady’s 
husband. The opposite party declared that Eli had 
made the journey overnight and induced the old man 
to accompany him to Kravno for Leah’s sake. It was 
notorious that the one thing in the world which succeeded 
in making him cantankerous was the suggestion of out- 
side pressure. For it was only as the spirit bade him, 
when and whither, that he would seize his gnarled cherry- 
stick, sling his wallet over his shoulder and take to the 
road again. But Eli had not given him a moment’s op- 
portunity to get cross, they said. He had induced, early 
dawn though it was, a subtle controversy in the manner 
of the pilpulists (the peppery ones, as they were called) 
upon the subject of parthenogenesis. Reb Moisheh had 
never had much truck with those arid intricate disputa- 


87 


DAY OF ead T ONE MENG 


tions which were the delight of the orthodox rabbis and 
were one of Eli’s own main preoccupations; but it was 
known in the yeshiveh that the subject of parthenogenesis 
always had more than an academic interest for him. The 
mists of sleep were hardly out of the Baalshem’s eyes 
before they were succeeded by the quick lights of curiosity. 
In half an hour he found himself pursuing both the 
theme and the road to Kravno in Eli’s company and 
having much the worst of the argument (though this 
last assertion may have been less the strict truth than 
a pardonable boast on the part of Eli’s admirers). 

Certain it was that he requested to’ be led to Serra 
Golda’s house and her sick daughter, not an hour after 
his arrival in Kravno. She was sitting opposite her 
father’s empty chair—it had remained empty since his 
death. A volume of the Pentateuch lay open before her 
on the table. Not even Serra Golda knew what had 
happened, for Reb Moisheh had asked her, with that 
rare smile of his which was more gallant than any youth’s, 
to leave them alone for a time. He summoned Serra 
Golda again after an hour or more had passed. It was 
all she could do to prevent herself from throwing her 
arms about the old man’s neck or breaking down into a 
passion of tears. There was a faint flush upon Leah’s 
cheeks, death-pale no longer. A flush so faint that other 
eyes than Serra Golda’s might not have noticed it; to 
her it meant that her days were not to end in the sterility 
that had threatened them. The girl’s eyes had lights in 
them again like distant lamps reflected in water. She sat 
forward easily upon the chair, one foot upon a stool and 
her arms clasped round it. 

That night as Leah drew on her nightgown, her mother 
perceived a small flat object wrapped round in red cloth 


PRETO E ENGR SST A 


suspended upon her daughter’s breast from a strip of 
ribbon. 

“What thing is this?” asked Serra Golda, taking it 
between her fingers while Leah was still drawing the 
garment down over her head. It was a coin, obviously, 
and not much bigger than a two-kopeck piece. 

“Mammanu!” said the girl, drawing away so that the: 
amulet slipped from between Serra Golda’s fingers. “He 
said, the Baalshem, that only my husband must touch 
it from now on for ever!” 

There was something purposeful, almost grim, in the 
smile that lifted the corners of Serra Golda’s lips as she 
crept to the door, in her tread as she turned the lamp 
out in the living-room and drew the bolts. A quiet was 
upon her that night. “Her husband only shall touch 
it,’ she murmured smiling, “only my daughter’s hus- 
band!” 


89 


CHAR TE Rvs Vb 


even. That demon of melancholy which had 

been gnawing at her heart’s core had been cast 
out of her. There was no doubt of that, even when the 
weakness which supervened upon its exorcism left her 
almost too weak to utter a word. But at least she was 
never too weak, when the women came in with delicacies 
for her, or her girl friends told what young men had 
sent a sly wink towards them as they issued from the 
synagogue after the Sabbath morning service—she was 
never too weak to smile her thanks for these bounties 
of gossip or chicken jelly. It had seemed no long while 
ago that a smile of all labours would be the most mon- 
strous for her to achieve. Yet her mother noticed, and 
no doubt there were other women not blind to it, that it 
was only when Eli had managed to unwind himself from 
the talmudic complexities of the yeshiveh and to spend 
some moments at the house of Serra Golda, that Leah 
found fervour enough not merely to smile her thanks for 
the chicken jelly but actually to partake of it. 

Strength urged its way slowly into Leah’s body with 
the high heats of summer. Only one circumstance de- 
layed its pace; Leah’s piety had in no sense abated its 
exigency even when her weakness forced her to her bed 
and, lying back among her pillows, she seemed so frail 
that a breath might extinguish her. There was still 


go 


| EAH’S recovery was no matter of a week or a month 


PS oa DD ie el NOR S LA 


no ordinance or austerity she did not observe. But 
whereas earlier in the year she observed them with a 
sort of hopeless fury, as if the more she added to her 
chance of grace, the smaller it grew, now she brought 
a sort of calm assurance to their execution. It was evi- 
dent to a child when the Ninth of Ab came round, the 
day which commemorates with fasting and prayer the 
destruction of the temple, that Leah was in no condition 
to forswear food and drink for twenty-four hours. Yet 
although holy writ explicitly states that the duty of fast- 
ing does not bind a sick person even upon the Day of 
Atonement, no one could induce himself to warn Leah 
to refrain from it. It was hoped, but scarcely believed, 
that she might at least take a sip of water and a crumb 
of bread once during the day. In fact once more she 
made the fast graver for herself than the rest. Once 
more she began it on the noon of the previous day, not 
upon its evening. So enfeebled was she when it was 
all over, feeble as she already was before it began, that 
there were a few who thought that having survived so 
much, now at last the end was imminent. 

But her cheeks filled out, the darkness ebbed from the 
hollows under her eyes. The end of the year of mourning 
for her father’s death was not far off. She did not know 
how soon after that her young bridegroom from ‘Terkass 
would descend upon her. But she hoped in much humil- 
ity that, body and soul, she might not be too unworthy 
when the request came to merge them with his; not 
too unworthy of him nor of his honoured father, Zcharyah, 
the first miller in Terkass, the Talmud scholar. The 
thought of his learning promptly brought Eli, who was 
never far distant, back to her mind! Reb Zcharyah 
could not be one-tenth so wise in the Talmud as Eli, 


gl 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


who was stated to have far outstripped Reb Chiyel, the 
town rabbi of Kravno. They said he could have had 
his smichah, his certificate of rabbinic qualification, 
months ago, had he desired it. But something withheld 
him, a diffidence, a curious unease which he could not 
phrase and nobody in Kravno, not even his colleagues 
in the yeshiveh, had an inkling of. He had not yet 
attained the secret he was striving for, despite all the 
immensity of his study, the secret that was so often but 
a finger’s length away from his finger-tips, the key which 
should resolve the enigma for him, which should re- 
arrange all its component mysteries in a new simple 
pattern, clear as a design of white clouds in a morning 
sky. It could not be far off; perhaps a sudden inflection 
in a voice as some one read a text so familiar to him that 
he had never divined its meaning, would render the secret 
to him. Perhaps it lay in a mere grammarian’s gloss, 
waiting unregarded till some one perceived the titan 
significance of the syllables that had seemed an academic 
footnote. Yet this old man had it, surely, and that 
other old man? Could it be conceived that it had eluded 
Moisheh, the Good Jew, all these years? Might they 
not be induced to convey it to him? No. Of what 
avail? He himself must first stumble upon it; not till 
then would it be valid for him. His own blood must be 
quickened by it first. Mind, eyes, ears, would respond. 

“Indeed it will be an honour,” Serra Golda had re- 
plied, “if you will walk with Leah a little in the street. 
An honour for me also.” He thanked her shyly, rubbing 
the cuffs of his black alpaca coat between finger and 
thumb. She had managed to keep her anxiety out of 
her voice, an anxiety she had up to now hidden from 
her neighbours, her daughter, even herself. It did no 


O2 


PRELUDE IN RE SSA 


harm that Eli should come to the house and talk to her 
daughter from time to time, nor that he should be seen 
walking with her. On the contrary it had done Leah 
much good. Every one knew by now that the affair 
with the youth from Terkass was not to keep hanging 
over for long and Leah herself had asked once or twice 
if there was need for her to set about any special prep- 
aration. Eli knew it. Every one knew it. Only in 
Terkass all was not going briskly. Serra Golda had 
been ready to leave the shop to Hinda and one of her 
more trusted friends at a signal from Reb Nochum, the 
marriage-maker. There was much to discuss with 
Zcharyah the miller. One thing and another had left 
the negotiations in mid-air—her husband’s death, dif- 
ficulties in the shop till Hinda was well in hand (for it 
was necessary to keep a sharp eye on Izzel Chaim, the 
rival grocer), the months of mourning, but above all 
Leah’s illness. The girl had been in no condition to 
be presented once more to the scrutiny of Reb Nochum 
or to encourage either the father or the son to enthusiasm 
should a meeting have been thought desirable. Had 
rumours travelled over to Terkass of these hideous 
reproaches Leah used so frequently to heap upon herself? 
Yet the people who did not care excessively for Serra 
Golda—they were very few—had been as prompt as 
any one else to acclaim them nothing but a symptom of 
the poor girl’s malady. Something would have to be 
done about Terkass. In the meanwhile, it did nobody 
any harm that the two young people went out together 
in the warm dusks through the cut grass meadows and 
along the high streets of maize. 

Leah had not known, nor was she destined to know, 
days more gracious than these that followed, so luminous 


Zz 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


were they and so passionless. It was a signal honour, 
she felt, that this brilliant young student should deem 
her worthy to present to her some of his most persistent 
theological perplexities. And indeed they both found 
with pleasure that there were moments when her freedom 
from academic sophistication rendered her capable of 
some acute suggestion that the possession of scholastic 
attainments would have made her too diffident to offer. 
She was the one girl among all the girls in Kravno, or 
among the women generally, who could compare with 
Eli in the matter of strict obedience to the letter of 
biblical and talmudic injunctions. So she might have 
put it to herself, but it would have been an understate- 
ment. Eli’s obediences were strict, hers were incredibly 
intricate. She was never slow to add some new com- 
plexity from whatever source she had apprehended it, 
were it a casual remark of Eli’s, or old Mimmie Malkah 
babbling over the candles upon a Friday evening, or Reb 
Chiyel droning his way through the Sabbath day orations. 

It could not be, she said to herself, that God had not 
forgiven her. Would He else have permitted her this 
association with the youthful saint? She recalled the 
prowess of his infancy, but without taking pride in it 
for her own sake that this prodigy might be seen walking 
by her side; with no emotion but thankfulness to God 
who was pleased to transmit such sanctity to a new 
generation that the gold girdle might bind Israel together 
from century to century. Before the infant Eli had been 
twenty months old, the women said, he had been able 
to read the Bible, backward and forward, as he chose; 
in another few years he was a master of Aramaic. Be- 
fore long Mishna and the Shulchan Aruch hid no secrets 
from him, and there was hardly a lamdan, a man learned 


94 


Pa OM Be DN ORO S'S ad 


in holy writ, who could hold his own with him in 
argument. ‘There had once or twice been uncomfortable 
moments when he had asked questions of such pungency 
that the cry of heresy was raised by some disgruntled old 
chassid. But his unremitting observance of every least 
commandment placed him immediately beyond the pale 
of censure for all unjaundiced eyes. 

She loved to hear his voice in easy invincible disputa- 
tion from behind the women’s partition in the synagogue 
upon Saturday afternoons. Then was the time when 
the greybeards and the young scholars gathered together 
over an informal meal of sliced onions, cold boiled 
potatoes and salted herrings, with a little schnaps to 
wash them down if some member of the congregation 
had been in a generous mood that week. But when 
he walked beside her in the meadows and that voice, 
for her own ears only, elaborated cunning parables and 
cited felicitous texts, her breast was full of the great 
goodness of God. The occasions were not infrequent 
when she perceived that he had so far pursued some 
side-path in the jungle of his fancies that he had become 
oblivious of her existence; nor indeed could she have 
followed him there. For her part she remained happily 
and somewhat proudly in the sunlit glade whence he had 
plunged away from her. She was proudest of all because 
thus she was assured that they met and walked abroad 
together as two Jews whose sole love was God and sole 
felicity was summed up in their meditation upon Him, 
each in his own degree. So she sat beside him upon 
the red spilth of beech-leaves or the grey of pine-needles, 
like some Heloise learning her lesson at the feet of a 
Judaic Abelard. 

Excepting that no passion made turbid the calm cur- 


95 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


rent of these days. Unclouded, unafraid, undistracted by 
outer rancour or self-distrust, their eyes met and parted 
and met again. They did not meet so often that people 
might say he slackened interest in his studies or that she 
neglected her household duties. They were like two 
youths, they thought again, who took pleasure in each 
other’s society. So they thought. So they assured them- 
selves, because of the pleasure they both took in God. 

Some one had said that Sergei the moujik was dead, 
some one that he had gone to be a soldier and would 
probably never return to these parts. ‘They were wrong. 
Eli and Leah in the woods one day saw a hacked tree 
shake off the leaves that lay upon it. They saw the 
face of Sergei define itself under the thatch of ruddy hair. 
They saw his eyes comprehend them malevolently before 
he turned his back towards them and disappeared into 
the wood. Now Leah knew that the opportunity was 
given her to declare unto God her gratefulness for the 
strength he had restored to her limbs and the sanity to 
her spirit. It would have been so disastrously, so 
despicably, easy to fall into a shuddering like an aspen- 
tree, to bite the blood out of her lips, to behave like an 
unsanctified creature not redeemed by the Lord. She 
placed her hand over her heart and pressed the amulet 
against the flesh. Then she drew herself up, lifting her 
forehead high. And she felt her hand at that moment 
seized within Eli’s hand and held there, as if God had 
animated him into making a sign upon God’s behalf. 

They did not separate their hands that evening. Why 
needed they? Do not two male friends on an occasion, 
when the devil has shown himself among the tree-trunks, 
thus walk together while dusk deepens? 

Once in a flimsy birch-wood, pale as flung spray, they 

96 


PRELUDE DN IRIG SSiId 


came across Sergei again, not alone this time. Several 
other moujiks sat with him, chewing sunflower-seeds and 
spitting vigorously about them. A little removed from 
the group sat the priest from the church in Prijni, strok- 
ing his black beard, his black habit about him. Eli’s hand 
tightened about Leah’s. They stole away fearfully. 

“Didst thou see the moujik’s teeth?” asked Leah. How 
proud she was that she could with unquivering voice 
thus speak of him. Yet she could not bring herself 
to utter his name. Eli knew well enough whom she 
meant. 

“There was naught else than his teeth to see!” said 
Eli. 

The ominous figures of the squatting men passed out 
of their minds. What were they more than shadows 
where fungi spawn, when sunlight poured for them out 
of the calm wise minds of the rabbis, Hillel Hannasi, 
Simon ben Jochai, Johanan ben Zakai? 

Full of light were these days that followed and like 
water that has found level meadows after steep adventures 
in the gaunt, craggy places. Luminous and passionless 
days. As if there is light without passion, passion with- 
out light. Yet there is a passion which flares suddenly 
like a lighted brand, and how disastrously. There is a 
passion which fills the sky with a sweet, gradual light, 
like the loveliness preceding the moon throughout the 
wide heavens whilst still there is no moon. And when 
the moon is abroad in the sky the mind does not recall 
at what moment the silver disk topped the sea’s rim or the 
plain’s rim. 

So when Eli’s lips were upon Leah’s it seemed either 
that they had been there always or were not there now. 
They were not two flames that came together making 


oye 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


a twofold smoke and sending wild sparks into the winking 
sky. They were two waters that had joined their cur- 
rents coolly, two airs meeting. ‘There was such chastity 
in his embrace and in her response that it did not seem 
that separately they had ever been chaste till now. 

“My little queen,” he whispered, “my sad and joyful 
queen!” 

“Thy servant, O Prince in Israel! Wouldst thou that 
I had my hair as of old that it might be a cloud on thy 
face?” 

“Thine eyes, my love! Only thine eyes 

“May kind God be with us!” 

“He is in thine eyes, my love. My proud queen, my 
little hurt birdkin. Thy wings, let them grow strong 
now!” 

“With God, with thee to teach me flight, how shall 
they not?” 

“The cool lips thou hast!” 

“God hath sent out the flame from them that they 
may be cool for thee!” 

“Let their coolness kiss me then!” 

“On mine eyes!” 

“On thine eyes.” 

“Even thus, O Prince in Israel!” 


eed 


98 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


I 


pe news had not had time to travel the muddy 


up-river roads to Sveksna, whither Reb Nochum, 

the marriage-maker, had betaken himself to ar- 
range a marriage between a girl with a squint and a 
fortune who lived there and a young gentleman with 
neither, who lived in a remote village. The young man 
had a false eye, it was true, a fact which Reb Nochum was 
anxious to disguise from the young lady’s family. But 
the last thing that could be said about that same organ 
was that it squinted. 

Many of the houses in Kravno were still smoking 
when Reb Nochum arrived, for most of them were built 
of wood. If he had not partaken so courteously of the 
large quantities of schnaps poured out for him by the 
family of the young lady of Sveksna, he might have 
perceived a remote red glow creeping up the southern 
heavens from the direction of Kravno. ‘The few people 
who were about at that late hour were of the opinion 
that some tramp or other somewhere had set a hay-rick 
alight, and Reb Nochum would have seen no reason 
to disagree with them. Kravno had always seemed 
rather more immune from pogrom than most places, for 
the town had squeezed out practically all its gentiles over 
the bridge into Prijni, and if the moujiks looked like 


99 


DAY-OF ATONEMENT, 


trouble, nothing could have been easier than for half a 
dozen stalwart youths to hold the bridge until the soldiers 
collected. The soldiers had on several occasions been 
known to make their appearance before the pogrom had 
got seriously under way and actually to throw their 
weight in with the Jews if the invading party did not 
too absurdly outnumber them. It was true that officers 
and privates alike felt themselves thereafter entitled to 
heavy and continuous levies, but half a fortune was better 
than no head. Krayno had always seemed safer than 
other places; Sveksna, for instance, where Jews and 
gentiles mixed haphazard. So that Reb Nochum set out 
for Kravno that morning with no premonition of evil, to 
present himself before Serra Golda. It had been his 
business of course to keep his eye, even by proxy, upon 
Leah. Her illness had very fortunately coincided with a 
peculiarly recalcitrant phase on the part of Avrom, the 
miller’s son, who had lost his heart to a flighty widow with 
her own hair. She had stormed like an eagle into the 
sheep-fold of Terkass, and when she finally left her eyrie 
vacant, it was found strewn with a rich down plucked 
from the breast of her victims. Little Avrom had pro- 
vided her with as many scorned trophies as anybody. He 
offered her his virtue, which, after slightly soiling it, she 
threw contemptuously aside. After an attempt at suicide 
on the part of Avrom which convinced nobody but Av- 
rom’s parents, Reb Nochum had once more been called 
for. That was how he came to be on his way to Serra 
Golda that morning. 

He never could forgive himself for leaving the village of 
Kravno with such despatch three minutes after he had en- 
tered it. It was true that a place which has just been con- 
sumed by a pogrom seemed hardly a healthy place to 

100 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


linger in for a benevolent old Jewish gentleman with a 
long beard and corkscrew ear-locks. For just as you 
could see wan flames here and there nuzzling and poking 
among the ruins like hungry dogs among garbage, who 
could be quite certain that those less kindly spiritual 
flames which had set Kravno alight might not suddenly 
break into fury again? And what was the use of staying 
on in Kravno, he had thought, when the roof-beam of 
Serra Golda’s distinguished grocery stores lay indistin- 
guishable from its door-posts? Not much likelihood of 
accommodating Avrom, the miller’s son, for two years, as 
the honoured guest and recompensed son-in-law in that 
fallen house. Not much likelihood of five hundred rou- 
bles down and his own commission. Which meant also 
that the commission would not be forthcoming at the 
other end. . . . It was a cruel world. 

Tears filled his eyes. Poor old greybeard, so to be de- 
frauded of his legal dues in the winter of his years. It 
was a gross, deceitful, evil-living world. Who knew what 
abominations had rioted in that section of it called Kravno 
for the Above One thus to consume it? He turned his 
back upon Sodom and did not once turn his head. 

It had been a pity. Had he made himself busy and 
agreeable, he might have convinced Izzel Chaim and Serra 
Golda, the rival grocer and the ruined grocer, who that 
very day arranged to marry each other, that nothing of 
the sort would have entered their minds but for his own 
tactful interposition. Of course the whole thing was due 
exclusively to Izzel Chaim’s own magnificent behaviour 
towards his late rival during the course of that devilish 
night. But that was where Reb Nochum’s professional 
agility came in. How often in the past had he not suc- 
ceeded in convincing a lady and gentleman who meditated 

IOI 


DAY OF "ATONEMENT 


matrimony and would doubtless conclude it without en- 
couragement from any quarter, that it was he and none 
other who had put that recondite idea into their heads; 
that without the employment of his services who knew 
what wild light o’ love might not suddenly deflect the 
vision of either the lady or gentleman into godless mo- 
rasses; that even if the marriage were brought about, who 
could be certain of continued felicity if Reb Nochum had 
not made the rough places of their temperaments smooth 
in preparation for the close contacts of the wedded state! 
But above all, and finally, was there not something im- 
pious, casual, beastly, about a marriage so libidinously 
arranged? Was it not a triumph of animal over spirit! 
Such a year upon all the enemies of Israel! 

Of course nothing was more self-evident to everybody 
than the advisability of a union between Izzel Chaim and 
Serra Golda. The woman had no shop and much person- 
ality, despite all the calamities that had battered her vigor- 
ous bulk. The man had a shop and no excess of personal- 
ity. But it shouldn’t have needed a pogrom, thought Reb 
Nochum, to point out to him of all people that a widow in 
one grocery shop and a widower in another grocery shop 
were clay for his moulding. 

Reb Nochum kicked himself. Then there was this bus- 
iness about Eli and Leah, who were already well on their 
way towards the frontier, Eli’s house having been spared 
and Serra Golda’s future being a matter of no anxiety. A 
town called Doomington, it was said, they were going to, 
in England somewhere. How had he allowed this busi- 
ness of Eli and Leah to develop under his nose, if only his 
deputy nose, without being aware of that good odour 
which in the past had brought him as infallibly to the 
spot as carrion from remote uplands to the place of a dead 

102 


EAE CD IAT NORIO SS hd 


body? Reb Nochum kicked himself savagely. Then his 
heart filled again with self-pity. “I am getting old. I 
am getting old. And this young creature, Yankel, from 
Sveksna, my rival, who is not a day over fifty years old, 
will be stealing my best customers from me. Let the 
Above One pity me and give me my old wits again. Have 
I not served him well?” 


II 


Leah had not set eyes on Sergei for the last time that 
day in the beech-woods, with his companions beside him 
chewing and spitting, and the black-robed priest stroking 
his blacker beard. Still once more she was to see him 
under the reeling heavens, the smoke gushing about him in 
great evil whorls, and he himself standing there vast as a 
priest of Baal, offering a child’s brains and blood. 

The evening had been curiously oppressive. So men 
had remembered later. It may not have been so, but 
whither else for their memories, saving into a marsh of 
lurid vapours, can the sun have set to make room for a 
night so wet with blood and so dry with flame? Trees 
creaked as if terror were in their bones. Leaves clutched 
at the contracted air, more stifling now in early spring 
than in the electric heats of summer. Yet there wandered, 
head-high above the levels, cold premonitory gusts as if 
the doors of winter’s charnel-house were set momently 
ajar. Portents in their backward-looking minds were in- 
vented and magnified, until certain old dotards who had 
been spared, and sinned woefully against God by lament- 
ing it forever after, swore they had seen the sun and moon 
in conflict, though well they knew that then was no season 
of the moon. Chayah the old midwife was attending at 

103 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


a birth that evening and she vowed that the child was born 
with two heads. Neither the child nor the mother were 
seen again, so that the midwife could not be contradicted, 
and no one wished to contradict her. Those plainer 
minds who could not recall or invent happenings so mon- 
strous remembered that there had been more traffic than 
was usual across the river from Prijni to Kravno these 
late days, and this last day most of all. It had not been 
flaunted in the eye or they would have noticed it at once 
and it might even have occurred to some one to be watch- 
ful or to give a mind to some sort of counter-measures, on 
the chance that mischief might be brewing. No, it had 
been rather a slipping of shadows from doorway to door- 
way, a whispering at corners of groups no sooner observed 
than dissipated. 

Alas that upon the dusk itself which ushered in a night 
so dreadful none said, “Behold the sun, a river of blood is 
flowing from its side!” and “Dost thou not see where a 
moon’s ghost has risen to join conflict with the sun?” 

Leah had gone to her bed with the day’s earlier in- 
felicity soothed from her brow and eyes. She had been 
troubled by the knowledge that at the earliest moment she 
must speak to her mother concerning Avrom and Eli, and 
of the choice that must be made between them. Eli was a 
talmud chochum, a credit in Israel, but Avrom was the son 
of arich man. Eli was merely the youth she loved. Av- 
rom was the youth chosen for her by her mother. If her 
mother were firm in her decision, how could she transgress 
the covenant of obedience and insist upon her own desire? 
Had she not heard the Rabbi say, quoting from one of the 
holy books: “So long as one is not busying himself with 
the Torah, he is forgetting it.” God did not destine her to 
marry Eli—who was she to deserve so rich an honour? 

104 


BREE ODEVT NOI ROS SA 


What right had she to keep him for three minutes only 
away from his holy study? Did it not say in the passage: 
“Thou shalt meditate thereon both by day and by night?” 

But his lips that evening on her brow and eyes drove 
from them their recollection of such stern words. And 
they lay on her lips cool as a blessing, sanctifying them. 
Had other lips ever lain there at all since the dawn of the 
world? She uttered the last prayer of all the day’s many 
prayers, curled up like a child in her bed. “Blessed art 
thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who makest 
the bands of sleep to fall upon mine eyes, and slumber 
upon mine eyelids.” The somnific potency of the words 
crept along her veins. “And thou shalt bind them for a 
sign upon thy hand,” she murmured, knowing that no such 
privilege was allowed her, woman that she was, “and they 
shall be for frontlets between thine eyes.” So they lay 
upon Eli’s hand, between Eli’s eyes. So had his lips con- 
veyed their sanctity to her, to her eyes and hand. “And 
thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, 
and upon thy gates.” 

Duly written year beyond year, further back than any 
grandfather’s grandfather could remember, upon the gates 
and door-posts of each house in Kravno. And when the 
folk of Kravno passed over the threshold, there was no 
hand not lifted to the holy inscription nailed in its thin 
metal casket upon the door-posts, no hand not carried 
thence reverently to the lips. Every child whose hand 
could not reach was lifted bodily there to kiss with his own 
lips the assurance and promise of God. “He slumbereth 
not nor sleeps.” ‘That night God slept. 

Leah’s senses were for several seconds conscious of a 
shrill, continuous screaming before her mind attached any 
significance to it. And when her mother’s hand dragged 

105 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


her from the bed, the screaming, still shrill and continu- 
ous, seemed dissociated from her mother’s mouth. The 
sound seemed curiously mechanical, as if it had passed 
beyond the register of horror which vocal organs are capa- 
ble of. Then there was a black interval of stillness and 
immobility, Leah on her knees by the bed, her mother’s 
hand clamped like a vise about her own. It was as if 
for one last desperate moment Serra Golda were attempt- 
ing to think into nullity all this fierce outrage; could she 
but think so powerfully enough, there would be no moan- 
ing and howling and shrieking along the street, no flame 
rising out of houses already inexorably in its grip, no 
crackling of flame against her own walls, nothing but her 
daughter and herself sleeping in their own beds, conducted 
through the night’s immaculate hours by their harsh or 
lovely dreams. Then she released her daughter’s hands 
and cried, “It burns, it burns! ‘The town! The house! 
It burns! It burns! It burns!” There was a swift 
gathering together of a few clothes by the illumination of 
the increasing fires. Noise and smell of the flame that 
was grasping the walls fast by now were about them. 
Heat was singeing their hair. They had thrust their way 
into the living-room whither the flames had not reached 
yet, and towards the side-door that led thence into the 
street. Steadily and efficiently as she might set about 
preparing the flour for a cake, Leah pulled back the bolts. 
There was a swishing sound as she thrust the door, not 
without difficulty, out into the street. A figure was bent 
over the oil-soaked hay that was piled there, a lit brand 
between his fingers. Not aware, perhaps, that there were 
women issuing, the figure doubled away into the street, 
then straightened itself and leapt in the air again and again 
and again, howling like a dog. 
106 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


Whither to turn? What thing to do? It seemed that 
the world presented to her, of walls tumbling in and crea- 
tures running, overtaken, struggling, sinking, was not the 
world she had always been familiar with. It was a fool- 
ish, mimic world rather, a stage-play. Runnings to and 
fro, sudden focuses of resistance, squealing, bellowing— 
unreal deeds, noises with no verity. Her mother beside 
her a pasteboard woman. ‘Tears hastening in unchecked 
streams down her mother’s yellow face as from a tap, her 
mother wringing her hands, jerkily, regularly, as if some 
one were pulling a string. A flushed scowling bear of a 
man was upon her, his arms were about her waist. He 
bore her down to the ground. The daughter stood still, 
tranced, as if some diabolic curiosity rooted her there. A 
Jew appeared, Izzel Chaim. He brought an iron bar 
down on the Russian’s skull. The bear-like arms loos- 
ened, the fellow danced comically a few steps of a back- 
ward jig, then lay in the road like a tree-trunk. It was 
not Izzel Chaim, it was not Serra Golda, they were fan- 
tasies. So too was that thick monster lying there, a 
trickle of blood crawling into his beard. And that was not 
Henkah, whom a chanting moujik dragged by the hair 
into a byway, as if she were a sack of flour and he were 
dragging it to the mill. She should have her lover now. 
A clockwork lover, a clockwork maiden. ‘There were no 
human beings, there were no human activities. They did 
not concern her, Leah, daughter of Serra Golda. They 
did not concern her because it was all a stage-play and no 
one had invited her to act in it. She stood there, looking 
on. What thing else to do? Whither to turn? 

Then Sergei became substantiate before her on the fur- 
ther side of the road, standing against the wall of a 
house not yet consumed, Sergei, colossal, malevolent, tri- 

107 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


umphant. There seemed to be flame in his hair, all the 
night’s evil was in his eyes, reflecting flame. His face, 
beautiful and hideous, was rapt into some demontiac ec- 
stasy. He said no word, for the crackling and roaring of 
the fires were his words. But he smiled towards her. It 
seemed she was dead. Then, as he held up the child that 
had been pressed between his elbow and his side, and the 
light fell upon the child’s face, Leah shuddered into life 
again. The child was Dina. Sergei had chosen well 
among the children on hand for his choosing. Then he 
seized the sweet, slim body by the feet, whirled it in the 
air about his head, the moaning, moaning air, and crashed 
the skull on the wall behind him. 

She did not know whether she had indeed torn the eyes 
from out of his head, for her own eyes were blinded with 
blood when she leapt like a panther upon him. She knew 
only that her nails ripped like talons. Nor, as she fell 
swooning to the ground, was there any deciding, then or 
at any time—for she was to see it twice again—whether 
that woman’s face that intruded upon the arc of her col- 
lapse was substance or avenging devil. It had no linea- 
ments she could recall. It merely shrilled out of twisted 
lips that writhed scarlet on a snow-white face: “Thou, 
thou, hast done it! Thou hast brought it upon us, outcast 
from Israel!” She was only certain, when her eyes 
opened again, that Eli’s lips closed them. 

“Hush, my child! hush, all is well! ‘The soldiers have 
scattered them! Be not afraid any more, little heart’s 
darling. It is well with thy mother and my own. God 
has been with us!” 

“Where are we now?” 

“At Izzel Chaim’s. Do not tremble, child!” 

iElimy,belovedinee, 7, 

108 


PRELUDE IN RUSSIA 


“My heart, my heart, what is it then?” 

“She lied. Eli, say she lied!” 

“Who lied?” 

“The woman who said it wasI . . . all this was I?” 

“There could be no such woman. Could God permit 
iti 

“I cannot stay in this place. She will come again. She 
will lie once more. Eli, Eli... .” 

“This is no place for thee, heart’s darling.” 

“Beloved, beloved, what then may be done?” 

“Not many days and thou shalt be my bride 

“How have I earned it?” 

“Or I a queen like thee!” 

“Then?” : 

“We shall go to a far country. So was it written. We 
shall be wanderers on the face of the earth. With thee, 
Léanu, there is no wandering. With thee is home—on the 
waste seas even.” 

“Whither then shall we go?” 

“There are many Jews in England. Since the time oi 
the pogroms their number is grown greater than before. I 
can teach the Torah and towns will flock to listen. Thou 
wilt dress in silk robes. Thou who hast doves’ eyes 
within thy locks. Thou whose teeth are like a flock of 
sheep that are even shorn. .. .” 

“Are there great towns there?” 

“One town there is, thou hast heard its name, no? 
London. There the people are as ten times the province 
of Kiev. Dost thou not remember? Thither went Bo- 
ruch, the son of Sief the parchment-maker, when they 
wanted him for a soldier, and he found a Jewish daughter 
there and there is a family, and when God has blessed us, 
I shall send for my mother and thou for thine also, though 

109 


1) 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


even at this moment under this roof she and Izzel Chaim 
are holding counsels regarding the future. These may 
come. Moreover, in this season of great misfortune shall 
not other folk from Kravno assuredly follow?” 

a OT ee 

“My child?” 

“I beseech it of thee, Eli. Let us go to no town where 
there are people from Kravno.” 

“Say a reason, lovely one.” 

“She also might come with them, she that lied!” 

“Birdkin, whithersoever thou desirest, even to world’s 
end. A town called Doomington there is. I can remem- 
ber no townsman of ours that went thither, though there 
be Jewish children enough, as I have heard tell.” 

“Thou art as a strong tree is!” 

“Thou art water and sunlight!” 

“Bring thy face close again!” 

“Until the day break, and the shadows flee away. 
Thou that hast doves’ eyes!” 


IIo 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


CHAP TE RWO Nee 


I 


Dee go the way of dreams. Whither goes fire 


when it is quenched or water when it is run dry? 

Leah knew no answer, standing behind her little 
counter in the shop-parlour in Jilk Street. Dreams go the 
way of dreams. God had appointed it so. Was it not to 
question the graciousness of God towards his children to 
wonder why he had not converted dreams into realities? 

Now was the slack hour of the morning, between play- 
time at Ealing Street School round the corner, and the 
moment when the factory-sirens surrounding it announced 
midday . . . announced potatoes and broad beans for 
carpenters, zngber for little girls and boys who had saved 
their play-time farthing to add savour to their midday 
dinners. 

Was it because Eli was a carpenter he cared for broad 
beans? Mrs. Novik’s husband next door was also a car- 
penter. He cared for broad beans. Was it the especial 
dish of carpenters? But Eli had had a weakness for them 
in Russia even. His mother had told her so. 

Sometimes, when the Jilk Street industry in ingber had 
been really brisk, there was a square hunk of meat to add 
to the broad beans. Eli did not care for it, but it was 
good for him—planing away all day, and sawing and 
chiselling. God forgive her, it wasn’t the work those 
hands and those shoulders had been created for. 

113 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


His hands . . . how delicate they had been, with what 
a deft motion they had turned the pages of the Mishna, 
the mere turning in itself a lovely thing to watch, if you 
could seal your ears against the sound of his voice. 

Not that that was all over, of course. Still at night he 
went off to the synagogue and still sometimes he lifted up 
his voice in exposition and amplification. But he listened 
now as often as he spoke. And there is a difference, is 
there not, between devoting all your time to it, all your 
twenty-four hours it may be—the Torah comes before 
wife and home, the Torah is God—there is a difference be- 
tween devoting all your time to it and coming home in the 
late evening from the workshop and then devoting to the 
Torah a mere three hours or four, your body still cramped 
with stooping over the bench. Your eyes are thick and 
filmy like the glue melting in its pot over a fire of chips. 
And your hands that were so delicate once, fumble with 
the pages, because they are now all coarsened with lumps 
and seams. The finger-nails are blue where the hammer 
has slipped or you have caught them in the vise. No, Eli 
was not too strong. Accidents were always happening. 
A little meat occasionally with his broad beans did him no 
harm. 

Thank God, they never missed the boiled hen for the 
Sabbath, not since they had managed to set up the little 
parlour-shop in Jilk Street with a packet of roubles Serra 
Golda and her husband, Izzel Chaim, had sent over from 
Kravno. They had determined not to accept the money, 
knowing as they did how every year added a new member 
to Izzel Chaim’s family, no harm befall them, and trade in 
Kravno would never again be the same as it was before 
the pogrom. But then their own little son, Reuben—four 


114 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


years ago it was, he was three years old at the time—fell 
ill, and what with Dr. Katz to pay and expensive food to 
buy, a hole had been eaten into the roubles before they 
knew where they were. Moreover, Dr. Katz had warned 
them that the illness would come on again if the child were 
not fed properly, the whole thing was merely a question of 
feeding. So what was there to do? Eli was working by 
the hour—so many pence to the hour, strikes and lock- 
outs were always readjusting the precise number. And 
the more hours Eli tried to put in, by some curious mathe- 
matics of the industry, the less he earned. Besides he was 
no brilliant workman to begin with; and when he tried to 
overdo it, the effort so lessened his value that the Imperial 
Chippendale and Kitchen-Chair Company gave him the 
sack without compunction and the Rosenbaum Cabinet 
Works turned him down after three days. There had fol- 
lowed five hideous weeks of unemployment. . . . 

So they had used up the rest of the money and bought 
up the little shop at the blind end of Jilk Street with its 
shelves and fittings and counter in the parlour. They had 
bought up the stock also, but when they came to make a 
closer investigation (Leah had not inherited her mother’s 
business acumen) it was discovered that quite a lot of it 
consisted of empty sample boxes weighted down with 
rubbish. 

They might have recovered from that. But there was 
no chance of surviving the competition of Levitsky’s, the 
almost London grocers, which established itself at the open 
corner of Jilk Street in the course of a single night. Mrs. 
Levitsky sold smoked salmon. ‘The window which fronted 
Ealing Street (where the school was) devoted itself in- 
solently to the sale of wurst and pressed beef. Mrs. Le- 

II5 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


vitsky had a special meat daughter who administered 
these commodities, so that there was no question of non- 
kosher contacts. 

The prospects were gloomy for the little hidden parlour- 
shop at the blind end of the street. Leah had not even 
begun to buy in her stock while Mrs. Levitsky, fortified 
by credits, was glorying in foodstuffs luxurious enough for 
the Cities of the Plain. Then of a sudden Leah discoy- 
ered in a chance flash of her mother’s business intuition, 
that her lateness was a blessing specifically conferred upon 
her by God. 

Ingber came to their aid, that sweetmeat of cooked gin- 
ger which her mother had sold in Kravno for the peculiar 
delectation of its young, that sweetmeat with which she 
herself had so often regaled little Dinélé, little murdered 
Dinélé, peace be upon her, in the: dead days of Kravno. 
Ingber came to her aid again, as it had come, by God’s 
miracle, to their aid an hour after their arrival in Doom- 
ington eight years ago, after their desolate, speechless, 
brow-beaten wandering across the waste lands. Mrs. 
Levitsky sold smoked salmon, it was true. She sold 
pickles. But who in all Longton sold imgber now Reb 
Sheikeh Pollock was dead? And why not sell halva also, 
as her mother had sold it, that sweet and sticky paste from 
Turkey? Serra Golda herself could have it forwarded 
from Kiev—or Odessa, wasn’t it?—and where was the 
child in Longton who would resist it, once safely arrived in 
Jilk Street and triumphantly displayed in the parlour- 
window of Number Twelve. Nor need she stop short in 
this insidious compaign for the suffrages of infant Long- 
ton (with the particularly condensed reservoir of Ealing 
Street School round the corner to draw on). What about 
roasted apples impaled on sticks and dipped into melted 

116 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


treacle? What about baking strudel, thick to the crust 
with raisins, in the off-seasons between festivals, when no 
harassed matron had time to contemplate the manufacture 
of such complex dainties? 

But it was ingber, ingber, all the way. Communica- 
tions with Odessa had not been so easy as she had hoped 
(though when a new bale of halva arrived in Jilk Street, 
it went hard but that it meant a new black bow for Eli’s 
Sabbath suit and a new pair of stockings for Reuben). 
Moreover, apples were not a perennial fruit, and the bak- 
ing of strudel for commercial purposes, however profitable, 
must not be allowed to interfere with a Jewish woman’s 
devotion to her holy duties. With ingber, however, she 
had an especial faculty. She could keep pace with the 
demand, without tempering its virtues. She might, in 
fact, be stated to have created the demand. 

And what use at all was Reb Sheikeh Pollock’s ingber 
without the breath of vanilla and the faint powdering with 
clanamonnc: 

Tt all came back to her, standing behind the counter 
there, slicing the zmgber into thin rhomboids, that first 
blank morning in Doomington, and Reb Sheikeh hobbling 
out of chaos with a gnarled stick in his right hand and a 
wooden tray suspended over his rounded shoulders. 
Grimsby had seemed Hell enough when they arrived there. 
When they. got out of the great station in Doomington, 
Hell had fallen into shrieking dissolution, being itself con- 
founded, being Babel. Swerving chariots drawn by great 
horses crashed out upon them from the black complex of 
streets. Men and women were encased within them or 
perched precariously upon their upper platforms. ‘They 
swung umbrellas against the face of heaven and shook 
their fists. They cried aloud in a bastard tongue, borrow- 

Try, 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


ing from each of the seventy and seven languages of 
Babel its most occult profanity. 

“These are even those,” Eli whispered, “who declared 
‘We will ascend to heaven and place there our gods, and 
worship them!’ Those also who said, ‘We will pour into 
the heavens of the Lord and match our strength with 
Im hi iesse 

A grotesque, misshapen creature set himself of a sud- 
den before them and howled into their faces, offering them 
printed sheets scrawled over with the devil’s hieroglyphs. 
Eli placed his arm closer round her. She clung to him 
terrified. 

“Have no fear, beloved,” he said, “neither of the officers 
of Nimrod nor of the children of Phut, Mitzrayim, Cush 
and Canaan, they that built Babel. What if these say 
even as those others, “Yea, we will smite God with arrow 
and with spear’? Yet them say! Come closer against 
me!” 

But she knew he was as frightened as, or more fright- 
ened than, herself. What traffic had he had with the 
world? For her own part, she had seen people and talked 
with them all day, far over the grey sea and the grey 
lands, over in Kravno, in the shop there. In the week 
they called Easter, when they held a great fair at Prijni 
across the river, did not the goyzm, the gentiles, crowd 
across the bridge and into their own shop? She had been 
alone behind the counter sometimes with three or four 
goyim in the place, thrusting their hands into the sacks 
of sunflower-seeds or lopping from its rope a bulb of gar- 
lic. “Why need we have fear, thou and I,” she said, 
““God’s chosen, Israel’s children?” 

It was a pity—this was not their own reflection—that 
God had not taught them how little ground was covered 

118 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


by their sad little hoard of roubles when once they had 
crossed the Russian frontier. It was a greater pity that 
He had not diverted from them the attentions of the well- 
dressed gentleman in Hamburg who spoke the most idio- 
matic Yiddish (the sequel proved he was not a Jew; or at 
the most that he was a converted Jew, which made him 
capable of still more monstrous villainies than a mere born 
goy). It was all about getting the last few roubles 
changed into sovereigns before landing in Grimsby. For 
the English authorities, if they did not confiscate roubles, 
taxed their importation heavily, explained the well-dressed 
gentleman. He disappeared to negotiate the transaction 
for his new and grateful friends, but something impeded | 
his return. They were forced to sail without renewing his 
acquaintance, E]i biting his lips as the slow tears coursed 
down his cheeks, Leah sobbing monotonously into her 
hands. 

Some profound sixth instinct conducted them from the 
Elizabeth Station in Doomington into Begley Hill, the 
region where the Jews were clustered between the great 
gaol and the crest of the gritty slopes of Longton. It was 
the instinct which made their race homogeneous despite 
interposed mountain-systems and oceans; the instinct 
which taught them, however little they knew of mountain- 
craft, where the passes lay and how to surmount them; 
which taught them, however little they had studied sea- 
manship, how a barque might be constructed and through 
what channels guided. It landed Eli and Leah, frail wan- 
derers, pale, devoted wanderers, upon the pavement-edge 
of a squalling street, littered with the pluckings of fowls, 
giddy with the shrieks of children. The street bore the 
name of Green Bower. No one took any notice of the 
new-comers. The more frequent incidence of the pogroms 


119 


DAX OF AT'IONEMENT 


during the last few years had made the spectacle of 
“greeners” less remarkable than it used to be, granting 
that had it ever been worth more than a half-contemptu- 
ous, half-sympathetic raising of the eyebrows. To have 
lived in Doomington ten months gave you full mandate to 
call the new-comer from Russia and Poland “greener.” 
(The emigrant from Rumania and Austria came stamped 
with a certain cultural validity which removed him from 
such categories.) ‘To have lived in Doomington two years 
and over dispensed you of any necessity to be aware of the 
existence of “greeners” at all. You had grown in to the 
fabric of an exclusive native aristocracy. You did not, 
by this time, live in Green Bower or the streets which 
curled away from it like the ribs from a spine. Or if you 
did, it meant that you were fundamentally and unescap- 
ably a “greener.” You would not move into the refined 
fringes of Begley and thence to Longton, nor ever, by 
cunning stages, into those ineffable southern suburbs so 
liberally besprinkled by the direct progeny of the Norman 
Conquest, whence you had to walk two or three miles to 
the nearest synagogue. You never failed to get there, of 
course. But the virtue resident in your journey and ar- 
rival were obviously in direct ratio with the length of your 
journey. 

These were discoveries not then vouchsafed to Eli and 
Leah, nor such as at any time concerned them intimately. 
There seemed no reason why they should not stand for 
some time over the gutter of Green Bower, nor, when 
night came, why they must not throw themselves down 
upon this great billowing perinny, the feather bed they 
had brought with them so far and so arduously, and be 
folded in each other’s arms from the black street and the 
black sky. Everything was at once so strange and so 

120 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


familiar; and whichever of these it seemed more certainly 
at any particular moment, it was always terrible, terrible 
—too terrible to bear. Their loneliness in multitude, their 
unarmed youth at the heart of these old regardless women 
and these shrieking children oldest of them all. 

She slipped her hand into his and found it desperately 
cold. 

“God will be with us,” she whispered. 

“T will speak to one of them, no?” he said. 

“Which one?” 

Why should it be any one more than any other? They 
looked about them hopelessly. ‘The women plucked their 
fowls. The children squalled. 

Then it was that Reb Sheikeh came hobbling out of 
chaos with a gnarled stick in his right hand and a wooden 
tray suspended over his rounded shoulders. He came 
towards them splaying out his feet unevenly, stopped a 
few yards away, then raised a wheezy asthmatic voice. 

“Kinderlach,’ he said, “wer kummt? Children, who 
comes!” For the main part they did not seem very in- 
terested. One or two suspended their noisy games and 
ran over to their mothers: 

“Mammy, mammy, gib mea farling! 

Then the old man raised his voice again: 

“Ingber, children, who comes? Ingber! A farling 
apiece!” 

Leah’s hand tightened desperately round Eli’s. 

“Didst hear, beloved, didst hear?” 

“Are we not in a place of the Jews?” 

She dropped his hand and walked quickly over to the 
tray. She turned her head again. Her eyes shone. 

“Ingber,” she cried, “like at home!” 

She was a child again, younger than she had been when 

I2I 


19? 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


she had fed Dinélé with the stuff, young as she was when 
her father sat her upon his knees and nibbled at the same 
piece with her that she might crow with a double joy. 
All her breast ached with a desire for ingber. All her 
fierce homesickness was concentrated upon it. A foolish, 
foolish sweetmeat, a foolish maiden—what memories lay 
crushed between its hard grains, waiting till the small 
white teeth crunched and released them. 

He came over toher. “Léanu, shall I buy thee some?” 

So her father might have stood over her. Should Léanu 
be a good maiden, there would be this, there would be 
that, but ingber to start off the feast. 

She saw his hand fumble about in his left trouser 
pocket. There was no coin there. She heard the forlorn 
Jingling of the few coins in his right pocket as the other 
hand explored it. 

“A shame upon me!” she said quickly. “Indeed thou 
shalt not!” Her voice broke as she said it. 

“Sooner no bread for me this day or the morrow than 
no ingber for my baby this moment!” 

He handed a coin over to the old man, and received in 
exchange a clumsy yellow rhomboid. In an instant her 
teeth were in it and had met. She was savouring the bit- 
ten fragment on her tongue. Her face fell. She was 
silent for some seconds. . 

“No,” she whimpered, “no. It is not as my mother 
Serra Golda and I made it at home.” A tear brimmed 
her eyes. “Try it!’ she ordered. He was no connoisseur, 
but he felt it incumbent upon him to shake his head dubi- 
ously as he chewed away at the piece she offered him. 

“Thou hast right,” he said. “It is not as at home.” 
He found himself attaching an enormous importance to the 
discrepancy. In a moment or two he was addressing the 

122 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


old man with a fervour he usually reserved for the discus- 
sion of midrashic texts. 

“You will forgive me,” he exclaimed, “but my wife tells 
me that the ingber you are selling is not such as they make 
at home! We have just arrived here, she and I, and we 
have not yet forgotten!” 

The old man looked up helplessly. Leah broke in cor- 
roboratively. 

“Indeed, yes. There is something missing. And you 
did not get the ginger properly to the boil!” 

“T know, I know,” said the old man. “Woe is upon 
me! When my wife, peace be upon her, was still alive, 
what child was there in Begley did not come running to 
my tray like a hart? She made it, you might think an 
angel from God made it—at the same time bitter and 
sweet, hard as a rock, yet it melted in the mouth. Ot, o1, 
what would you have?” 

“And you make it yourself now, father-in-law?” asked 
Leah, her voice throbbing with pity. She forgot how tired 
she was, how hungry, how her back ached. “Did she 
not tell you, peace be upon her, how to make it before she 
died?” 

“Who should know,” he replied somewhat petulantly, 
“that she should die, a young woman, fifty-eight she was? 
And then when all of a sudden she lies on her death-bed, 
I should ask her how to make ingber, yes?” 

“How should you,” she whispered, “poor father-in-law!” 

“And a grown son I have—the age of your husband he 
might be, let me be making no other comparisons—Dov- 
vid his name is. Would you think he might be helping 
his father to boil the water or mix the ginger when it was 
boiling? Such ayear uponhim! The Devil knows where 
he hides himself months on end, and when he’s at home, 

123 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 
what irks him: Ingber? Such a year! Violin-playing, 
smearing paints on linens. Well, what would you? Ham- 
isher ingber I should give you—ingber like at home?” 

A small boy swaggered up and held his farthing aloft 
with a promissory air. He stood choosing his morsel for 
a full minute. The old man waited anxiously. 

“And they would be round me,” he murmured when the 
small boy had made off, “like flies round sugar, while she 
lived still, peace be upon her!” ‘Then he suspended his 
private complaint to resume his public litany: 

“Little children, ingber! Who comes? Who comes? 
Ingber, a farling apiece!” 

But the little children had tasted it before; they dis- 
played no enthusiasm now. The old man adjusted his 
straps about his shoulders and turned his face from Leah 
and Eli. He was shuffling away, wagging his grizzled 
head about from side to side, when Leah placed a hand 
upon his arm. 

“Father-in-law,” she said, “if thou desirest I will make 
it once for thee, to show thee how thy wife, peace be 
upon her, made it. Shall that be?” 

He turned his face incredulously. “There is something 
wrong, that I know. Thou sayst thou know’st what thing 
is wrong?” 

She swelled with the confidence of her knowledge. 
“Dost thou remember the drop of vanilla?” 

eNol? 

“Or a sprinkling of burnt almond?” 

“No 2 

“What, then, of scattering a few grains of cinnamon?” 
“Cinnamon?” 

“And while it thickens dost thou stir the whole while?” 


124 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


“How shall an old man think of these things?” 

“Father-in-law, we have no roof to cover our head this 
night. Be once our roof, and the morrow I shall make 
thee ingber as my mother Serra Golda taught me!” 

“I have a room like a hen-coop, daughter, for my son 
and me. How shall that suffice?” 

“As God wishes it! Let it stand then! Perhaps if we 
find sleeping-space to-night, on the morrow. . . .” 

“Hold! There is the cellar where I make the ingber. 
A heap of coke is more than one half of it.” 

“Softer than the down of fat birds!” 

“Come, children, it is not far from here we live, in 
Crupp Street. Dovvid, he may be at home, he may not, 
the Devil knows. There is no traffic in ingber to-day!” 

“To-morrow they will come running in from all the 
forests, children clapping their hands!” 

“Forests?” ‘The old man looked up, startled. Then he 
sniggered soundlessly. “Forests!” He beat his stick 
upon the gound. “This way, this way! That my cellar 
had been a palace, rather!” 

So it was that Eli and Leah found their way into the 
cellar of Number Five Crupp Street. Many months and 
many months more were to pass before they found their 
way out again. But there were walls to it, and it had a 
roof. What would you? 

“God be thanked!” she would murmur in that perpetual 
twilight, as she stirred the mess of thickening ginger. “If 
not for ingber, who knows where, whither!” 

“Who knows?” Eli echoed. 

She lifted her free hand. 

“The Above One, shall He forget His children?” 

A rat would pause half-way across the empty doorway 

125 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


of the cellar, on his slow saunter between hole and hole. 
He would fix his mild eyes on them, then settle upon his 
haunches and lift his paw to his face prettily. 

“How should He forget?” echoed Eli. 


It 


Dreams go the way of dreams. Whither goes fire when 
it is quenched or water when it is run dry? Leah knew 
no answer as she turned away from the kitchen-fire where 
her reflections had half an hour ago carried her. She 
shook the black cooking-pot of beans she held and heard 
the last drops of water sizzling against the side that had 
been rammed against the red coke. Reuben would be 
coming in from school in twenty minutes to wash his 
hands for a moment before repairing to the Hebrew 
School, the chayder, to recite his midday prayers. When 
he returned from chayder, Eli also would make his ap- 
pearance. She had got a large green apple for Reuben, 
the ripe red apples not being on sale yet. A strange 
child was Reuben. There he might sit for an hour on his 
stool by the fire, holding the apple between his two hands, 
and slowly, slowly revolving it, feeling its curves with the 
tips of his thin, hungry fingers that suited so little with his 
blank, incurious little face and the dead, coarse darkness 
of his hair. That was why he preferred a large green 
apple to any small ripe one. He could go on turning it 
for ever, following its curves to the stalk and away again, 
without ever being brought short by a tract of rottenness 
in its smooth hard skin. Then she would say sharply, a 
curious little anxiety gnawing at her heart: “An apple is. 
an apple. ‘Thou eatest, no?” He would come to himself 
with a start and search her face with those large, almost. 

126 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


empty eyes. He would pronounce his blessing before fruit, 
slowly, articulately: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, 
King of the Universe, who createst the fruit of the tree!” 
“Amen!” she would add, closing her eyes. “Eat, my 
child!’ He would finish off the fruit voraciously in a few 
large mouthfuls. 

How had dreams not come true? Was it not her dream 
that she should have such a son as Reuben, so steady and 
exact in the fulfilment of all the hundred duties that had 
been enjoined upon him almost from the moment he could 
stammer his first clear syllable? Had she dared to hope 
it those days before he was born when she walked along 
the streets and heard these heathen children conducting 
their unsanctified game on the Sabbath, on the festivals, 
even? ‘They held coins in their hands on the holy days 
to buy sweets at some gentile shop. Who could tell (she 
shuddered) what greases of what loathly creatures had 
been used in their concoction? Once, on the Passover, 
she had seen a Jewish child with a piece of leavened bread 
in his hands. She held her hand to her heart at the recol- 
lection. She had almost swooned. 

Was it not to be expected that Reuben should be the 
proper Jew he was, being his father’s son? Of course you 
could not hope he would be a learned doctor in the Tal- 
mud at seven, as Eli had been. That belonged, alas, to 
other skies, to other airs than these. And how should 
there be a second Eli, in one century, even his own son? 
Enough that there was no prayer the child neglected, from 
the “nail-water” in the morning when he awoke, to the 
“Hear, O Israel” he intoned with the bed-sheet covering 
his head, before he curled himself up in bed for the night. 
Such a father, such a father . . . and when the time came 
for the boy’s confirmation, he too, like his father, would 

127 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


assume his phylacteries and never, saving on the specified 
days, would remit them, whether God appointed hunger 
and sickness for him or purple and fine linen? Never 
would remit them till the last “Hear, O Israel” would be 
said and the clay was on his eyes. 

She poked at the fire crossly. A scandal upon her for 
a Jewish mother thinking of her child thus. What then 
of the red-cheeked wife, an ornament to Israel, that kind 
God held in store for him? Such a dowry she brought, 
such bed-sheets and pillow-slips and beakers and spoons, 
sO virtuous a Jewess was she (this above all) to her finger- 
nails and toe-nails, that all Jilk Street and all Begley and 
all Jewish Doomington talked of nothing else for months 
before and after their wedding. What then of the first- 
born, the service for his redemption, the service at the cir- 
cumcision, his first learning of the Holy Alphabet? ... 
What of the other children one after the other? (Reuben 
and his wife would be more fortunate than they had 
been.) What bright-eyed children they should bear, 
chubby as geese, their grandfather’s grandchildren in piety 
and wisdom, little Jewish lads and maidens such as trod 
the green meadows of Kravno, the green meadows also of 
Zion! 

She stood by the table cutting up the loaf. If he would 
only eat properly! She sighed. She knew her thoughts 
had circled round again to the point from which they had 
started, they had traced once more the vicious circle they 
had trodden so persistently, so sinfully these seven and 
eight years. Dreams go the way of dreams. What 
dreams they had had! Was he not to be the young 
wonder-rabbi of Doomington? But the old rabbis were 
too deeply and comfortably rooted to make room for a 
pale young stranger from a town they had hardly heard 

128 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


of. They felt at more than one point the disadvantage 
of arriving among a community of Jews where none of 
their own townsmen seemed to have preceded them. 
Leah had, in fact, suggested that they should migrate to 
Sheffield, to London, where they would not be absolute 
strangers, for families they had known were already set- 
tled there or meditated settling. But he was aware of the 
ghoulish terror her own suggestion produced in her, how 
her veins ran cold. He had not forgotten that stark night 
of pogrom. ... 

“Eli!”? she had cried. 

“My child?” 

“I beseech it of thee, Eli. Let us go to no town where 
there are people from Kravno!” 

“Say a reason, lovely one!” 

There would be no need for her to say it a second 
Time. 

Besides, where was the money to come from to migrate 
even from Reb Sheikeh’s cellar in Crupp Street to a back 
attic in Green Bower? He had made the effort to become 
a rebbi, a teacher of the young. People from their own 
town might have conquered their reluctance against con- 
signing their children to a chayder, a Hebrew School, con- 
ducted in acellar. But emigrants from Lodz or Ekaterin- 
oslav felt themselves called on to favour the claims of their 
own townsmen, particularly as the proportion of rebbis to 
boys seemed two to one. So many more people were de- 
sirous of imparting Hebrew learning than of acquiring it. 

Not that Eli’s enormous learning was not handsomely 
and humbly acknowledged, particularly in the small syn- 
agogue called the Ukrainer Chevrah, where he had taken 
up an inconspicuous seat near the door till the elders de- 
clared it scandalous that so much learning should occupy 

129 


DAY, OF ATONEMENT 


so mean a place and he was set not many benches away 
from the Holy Ark itself. Several parents had even con- 
signed their children to Reb Eli’s chayder, deeming that 
the rebbi’s rare virtues, despite their outlandish origin, 
made up for the faulty hygiene of the theatre in which 
they would be practised. But, to be brief, Eli’s chayder 
had been a failure. He did not possess the faculty of dis- 
tinguishing one boy from another. He did not insist on 
punctuality, the prime merit of chayders and rebbis (for 
only by prompt and protracted attendance at chayders is 
the sinful pupil compelled to cut short those abominable 
practices of football, marbles, and buttons which lead ulti- 
mately—if not rigidly controlled—to apostasy and the 
gallows). Nor could he refrain from initiating before an 
audience of three sizall boys who had hardly learned to 
piece together their syllables a subtle harangue on tal- 
mudic, civil or criminal law. 

The last pupil hung on dubiously for a fortnight, then 
died of pneumonia incurred by a bathe in a brick-croft 
pond which the boy had plunged into one damp evening 
sooner than plunge in Reb Eli’s company into the philos- 
ophy of Rashi and Maimonides. No further parent in 
Green Bower or its vicinity deeming it advisable to submit 
his children to Reb Eli’s spiritual guidance, the two young 
people found it difficult to live on the proportion of the 
profits from ingber set aside by Reb Sheikeh for the use 
of its manufacturer. (He had allowed the whole process, 
save its actual sale, to devolve on Leah from the be- 
ginning.) 

Then it was that young Dovvid Pollock had made one 
of his periodic appearances out of the void. He leaned 
indolently against the door-post of the cellar. “It is my 
caprice,” he said, “to become a carpenter. An intriguing 

130 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


profession, I think. I prefer the Galilean to the pre- 
Raphaelite mode from the point of view of abstract dec- 
oration. My reference is, of course, to Holman Hunt’s 
somewhat tepid composition. A fortnight will suffice for 
me, probably. Have you any feelings on the matter, Eli?” 

Leah hardly ever understood a word Dovvid said. To 
begin with he talked in German, only very rarely adul- 
terating it with Yiddish when for any special reason he 
desired to make himself completely intelligible to his lis- 
tener. And quite frequently, as if especially to put her 
out of the orbit of conversation, he persisted in talking 
English to Eli, even a month or two after Eli’s arrival in 
Doomington, and insisted upon receiving his reply in the 
same language. ‘Though Eli had never previously experi- 
mented in the art of acquiring a new modern language, his 
astonishing success with English proved that the gift of 
languages was merely an aspect, an automatic function al- 
most, of his mental equipment. He seemed less to learn 
the language deliberately than to find the faculty of it in- 
hering upon his tongue. An observer might have deemed 
it less astonishing than uncanny. However highly he 
ranked Eli’s native intelligence he could not have repressed 
an odd fancy at the spectacle of Eli’s pale and sensitive 
face turned upward to the swarthy and shaggy head of 
Dovvid Pollock, set hugely on his shoulders. ‘The black 
brilliance of Dovvid’s eyes, shining from between the 
fallen jagged masses of hair, could not but have confirmed 
the fancy. He would have deemed that Dovvid Pollock 
willed—he would have found no other word—that Eli 
should apprehend this new faculty and become possessed 
of it to the roots of his mind. He might have detected a 
phantom flicker of mirth dancing eerily along the jetty 
surfaces of those same eyes. 

131 


DAY” OF ATONEMENT 


“It is my caprice,” said Dovvid Pollock, “to become a 
carpenter.” 

“Caprice!” The observer would have isolated the 
word, clung to it. He would have felt a curious contrac- 
tion of the scalp behind his ears. He would in later years 
have wondered, “Was that a foreboding of this dark 
drama in Doomington? Or was it merely some wander- 
ing miasma out of those subterrene damps that affected 
me?” 

But Leah did not understand English. Dovvid Pollock 
gratified his caprice and became a carpenter for a fort- 
night. Eli, the incomparable scholar out of Kravno by 
the Dnieper, became a carpenter for many a month and 
year—till a more potent preoccupation called him from his 
bench, as it had called another of the same race and mys- 
tery, to the agony in the brick-croft and the spitting faces 
at street corners. 


III 


She looked upon them with a quiet, subdued bliss as 
they sat side by side on the springless sofa eating their 
dinner. What Jewish wife and mother could expect a 
greater nachuss?—(untranslatable word, let no attempt be 
made upon it). What a shy secret smile the child had for 
her when he came in from school; and how, when the 
father followed, those older but not less childish lips were 
pursed to give her a faint kiss of salutation and to receive 
it. For them the feverish contacts of less devoted and 
disciplined beings were too much and not enough. What 
joy it was to see them washing their hands together in 
preparation for the meal, to hear them recite the blessings 
together before and after; to know that whosoever might 

132 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


fail in these holy duties in Begley or in all Doomington, 
her husband and her son each in his degree were the serv- 
ants of the God of Israel, when they sat in their house, 
when they.walked by the way, when they lay down, when 
they rose up. What if God had not seen fit to appoint 
him to the place at the right hand of the rabbis, here in 
this new land? In the old it had seemed certain enough. 
Any other fancy would have been thought monstrous. 
The idea that he must some day earn his bread as a car- 
penter would have been considered by half Kravno as un- 
bearably comic, by the other half as unbearably profane. 
Had he so desired it, he could have spent the rest of his 
life wandering as a guest from the house of one rich Jew 
to another, six months here, two years there, joining her 
for a week or two from time to time, keeping her always 
supplied with everything she might need. 

She seized the poker vigorously. Was she slipping back 
again into a condition of wicked petulance? How much 
more had she to thank God for than most women? She 
took in a swift vision of the charred relic of their home in 
Kravno, of the rheumy cellar in Green Bower. Then her 
eye embraced the warm little kitchen they sat in. There 
was a mirror on the mantelpiece flanked on each side by 
two brass candlesticks and one brass tray, a queen’s 
dower. There was the brass mortar and pestle that had 
been recovered from the ashes. ‘There was a chair by the 
fire-guard with four sound legs. It had been Eli’s own 
proud privilege, when he had attained sufficient mastery 
of his craft, to supply the chair with a coherent wooden 
seat instead of the cheap cane which little Reuben had 
slipped through on one occasion, and it was all the neigh- 
bours and she could do to separate them without irretriev- 
ably damaging either. There was, unaccountably, a col- 


133 


DAP OF ATONE M ENGL 


oured glazed shoe from Quimper in Brittany, hanging 
from a pale pink ribbon. ‘There was a picture of Moses, 
contemplating the Tablets of the Law. She had not been 
quite certain about the Moses. He was not wearing a hat. 
In fact she had found it difficult at first to convince herself 
that it could be Moses who was so inadequately attired 
for so sacred a contemplation. Maggie, the fire-goyah 
(she who attended to the fire on Friday evenings and the 
Sabbath, and was more learned in the by-ways of Jew- 
ish lore than many of her employers), pointed out to her 
that the Shield of David, which consist of two crossed tri- 
angles, was sewn on to the patriarch’s breast. Undeterred 
by the anachronism, Leah promptly gave Moses the place 
of honour between the faded portraits of her parents on 
the main wall opposite the fire. Then there was the table, 
with a blue and red chequered cloth to cover it on cere- 
monial occasions. And another chair by the table. And 
above all, the sofa. It had no springs. The American 
cloth was patched in several places. It was not quite 
certain in one leg. But there were only three sofas in Jilk 
Street. And she possessed one... . 

“A few more broad beans, Eli, no?” 

He did not hear. These books, these books. . . . This 
one was in English, too. The English language had at 
first given her as many qualms as the hatless Moses. 
Could anything seemly, of good report, be put together 
in such a language when, spoken, it created such dis- 
sonance? Eli pointed out that Chumuish, the Pentateuch, 
had found its way into that language, even some portions 
of the Talmud. She needed some convincing that it was 
not a degradation to those scriptures. Yiddish, obviously, 
even Russian ... but English? She still shook her head 
from time to time at the spectacle of her Jewish table 


134 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


littered with outlandish writ. French books too, Ger- 
man... but that language seemed to have borrowed a 
good deal of its vocabulary, however inefficiently, from 
Yiddish . . . German also could be condoned. But what 
necessity was there at all for any of them? What must 
possess Dovvid Pollock to bring in these stumpy volumes? 
Were not the huge Hebrew folios piled in the cupboard be- 
hind the sofa enough? And these were books indeed, 
they smelled like books, not like waterproof factories. 
Their pages reverently turned from generation to genera- 
tion were worn down into the thinnest of fine silk. ‘The 
little fingers of Reuben in their day should make them 
finer still. They were often on the table together, the old 
books and the new. You might see him nosing along a 
page of one of these foreign books, delicately, like a hound 
scenting a trail. Then he would pause and sniff inquir- 
ingly. (There was time enough for these pastimes. On 
Sunday mornings, for instance, before the greybeards had 
gathered in the synagogue! Or an hour or two before go- 
ing to work, when Leah, after long supplication, permitted 
it. And were there not always strikes or lock-outs to 
assist a student-carpenter in the prosecution of his stud- 
les?) He would sniff inquiringly and pause. He would 
double back to some great Hebrew tome, turn the pages 
rapidly till he attained the passage he needed. A phan- 
tom smile played upon his lips a moment. But he had 
not found all he sought for. He was down at his texts 
again, scouring over wide expanses like a hare, or like a 
mole burrowing deeply. Blind, still blind, he seemed to 
be saying then: When will the vision at last be granted 
me? Or has it been granted? Am I obdurate? 

“Eli, I say again, beloved, a few more broad beans?” 

He looked up from the volume he had been reading. It 


135 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


was entitled The Critique of Pure Reason, the author be- 
ing Immanuel Kant. He smiled wanly. 

“My maiden,” he said, “forgive a wicked, wicked 
husband!” 

He reached his plate forward. Their fingers touched as 
she extended hers. He forgot the plate that was to be 
replenished, she for a few moments forgot the pot that was 
to replenish it. ‘Their fingers played together for a swift 
passage like ten pale children. Then she remembered the 
pot again. 

“Child, child!” she admonished. She emptied the last 
beans on to his plate. Then she said, “And for thee, Reu- 
ben, is a great green apple!” 

The boy-lifted his eyes-gravely. 

“What a lovely muvver I’ve got!” he said, pondering the 
words slowly, as if they were a philosophic issue. “What 
a lovely muvver I’ve got!” Then he added slowly and 
reflectively as before, passing his finger-tips round the ap- 
ple as was his wont, “Nobody in the world’s got a nicer 
farver and muvver than me. Not nobody in the world!” 

“An apple is an apple,” she said. “Eat, child, eat.” 
She spoke more harshly than she had intended. Had she 
not spoken so, she knew that she must have wept in her 
joy and pain. 


136 


CHAPTER TWO 


Eli’s picket, something to lean against. ‘The strike 
had been in progress nine days, and they were al- 
ready saying there was some talk of asettlement. The last 
one, only five months ago, had lasted nine weeks, though 
the secretary of the Union had assured them that the Vic- 
toria Cabinet Works couldn’t possibly last out more than 
a week. Thank God for ingber. What did the poor 
wretches do whose families were forced to exist on the few 
shillings dole the Union managed to scrape together? 
Forward ten paces. Back again. Lamp-post. It was 
something of a farce. Who would want to blackleg at the 
Victoria Cabinet Works while there was . . . while there 
was almost anything else in the world todo? ‘These hours 
of picketing might be rendered tolerable if only a man was 
allowed to read. They didn’t publish the Talmud or 
Hegel in volumes that slipped into the pocket. The idea 
was almost unseemly. They were intended for low tables 
and dark rooms and a lamp, for a man’s body and soul 
bent in reverence before them, all the long hours between 
midnight and dawn. Not to be furtively lifted from his 
jacket-pocket (if he could happen to find a primer or 
something that would just squeeze in) by a common car- 
penter on picket-duty till a red-faced, stubbly-chinned, 
beer-reeking strike-official came thumping along and flung 
the book into the gutter: 


ils was fortunate that there was at least a lamp-post on 


137 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


“Blast tha’ bluddy eyes, sheeny! Art on picket or noa? 
Dost tha’ think thar’t at school still, mebbe?” 

viwwas only.) cD was onlys a? 

“Shovin’ a gawmless gowk like thee on t’ job! Wots 
Union coomin’ to? Go and sook pap, Ikey. Tell 
mammy I toald thee!” 

That had happened during the last strike. They had 
specifically warned him this time against a repetition of 
the offence. 

Forward ten paces. Back again. Lamp-post. His 
eyes were open, wide open. Should any odious blackleg 
come crawling on his belly round the corner of Tib Lane 
and sidle along towards the door deputed to Eli’s super- 
vision, those eyes were evidently awake enough to give 
ample warning. So even the red-faced, stubbly-chinned 
gentleman would have deemed. So did not Dovvid Pol- 
lock advancing forward out of Tib Lane, and stopping at 
a distance of five or six yards to gaze upon him contem- 
platively, not without a sort of faint amusement, through 
the narrowed slits of his eyes. You would have thought 
even those narrow slits shed more light, a dark, fearful 
light, than the full orbs of most men. 

Dovvid Pollock did not imagine that Eli’s eyes were 
wide in the steadiness of their scrutiny for belly-crawling 
blacklegs. He knew what a mask they were, shutting 
out like grey window curtains from the knowledge of 
passers-by what inquisition was being conducted within- 
doors, how pertinacious, how hopeless, how passionate. 
He could also interpret correctly why a sudden shiver 
passed through Eli’s body, as if a cold wind blew towards 
him. He knew why Eli’s hand shook as he lifted it 
to his forehead. And indeed, he was not surprised to 

138 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


hear the voice of Eli exclaim, before the grey eyes had 
turned and fallen upon him: 

“Ah, Dovvid, is that you?” 

“None other!” 

‘Where have you come from? Why do you spring 
on me so suddenly?” 

“Am I not your friend?” 

“My friend!” 

“Are you doubting it, Eli?” 

“Doubting it? Did I say I doubted it? Do I not 
know how much I owe to you?” 

“Why do you ask me then why I spring on you so 
suddenly? Would you have me send you postcards tell- 
ing you what time at what station my train arrives? I 
do not travel upon trains.” 

“Where have you been this time?” 

Rivnave Deen) s.e.) Have: been.))).7ilet/ meisea: where 
I have been. I have been to the southern provinces of 
France under the Pyrenees. I kept sheep for a time 
for a farmer in a village called Pierre-Fitte. I saw a 
waterfall where the end of the world shuts a valley in, 
a great cirque of rocks called Gavarnie. The waterfall 
swoops like Lucifer falling out of heaven. I wondered 
if I too would break in spray and rainbows, if I swooped 
through the air a thousand feet for a thousand years. 
Or would I boil in Hell’s bottom like the slapping lava 
of Stromboli?” 

“Why do you talk in riddles and pictures?” 

“I leave precise ratiocination to you. I leave it in 
subtle hands; in a subtle brain rather.” 

“You are mocking at me. Why must you always 
mock at me?” 


139 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


“On the contrary, I am not mocking at you. I am 
reproving you. I have no doubt at all of your subtlety. 
You proved it adequately in Kravno ten, fifteen years 
ago. You were never wanting in subtlety. It is your 
courage I am doubtful of.” 

“Would you have me go with you starving and thirsting 
among the mountains, eating berries and drinking dew? 
Had you a wife and a child you too might cast an anchor, 
though God knows that’s hard to conceive. And when 
I should descend from the mountains, I have not your 
faculty for stripping a shoot and cutting stops and making 
such wild music with it as makes all the women weep 
and load your bag with chickens and cakes. I am not 
made like you, Dovvid.” 

“You're a more foolhardy adventurer than I am, Eh, 
in countries more desolate. And I should suspect that 
your reward, should it come, will be a handsomer than 
chickens and cakes.” 

“There’s little room for adventure between the plane 
and the plank, the nail and the hammer.” 

“You are being wilfully stupid.” 

“Why have you come to scold me? Did I call you? 
The captain of the picket will be round sooner or later 
and find me talking to you. He'll think I’m trying to 
amano. 1.7 

“You exaggerate your importance in their schemes. I 
said you were being wilfully stupid. You know it. 
When I said that you’re a more foolhardy adventurer 
than I am, I meant—and you know that I meant—that 
the sun shines rarely on the lands where you wander, the 
lands of the spirit, over the waste continents of philosophy. 
Huge clouds hide him most of the day, and the day is 
short and there are few stars at night. But why venture 

140 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


there at all if you do not venture with courage like the 
prophets themselves, or the utterers of apocalypse? Like 
Spinoza or Descartes?” 

“A miserable little youth from the yeshiveh, a carpenter 
in Doomington!” 

“Pah! You tire me! There have been other car- 
penters !” 

“Where then do I fail?” 

“Ignoring that all philosophy, all faith, begins with 
one first wild leap in the dark, finding your feet planted 
on one narrow path under the cliff, there on that path 
your feet are fixed forever. Forever and forever your 
feet pursue it; sometimes when a path leads from it to 
burrow into the cliff’s heart, there also you will trust your- 
self. You will even scrabble upward along its steep slope 
or let your feet down below the level of the path, feeling 
desperately the whole time for the solid rock to support 
your feet again. But to leap into the dark, to feel the 
wind whistling in your hair, Eli, as you descend like 
a meteor... to alight... who knows? What does 
that matter? If the rocks are there you will not know 
for long. It may be there at last is the rich green grass 
below you, a few yards below only, the place of flowers 
you have been looking for, the answer to questions, the 
resolution of doubts! But only by venturing, by leaping, 
shall you find it. Like the water-fall at Gavarnie, like 
Lucifer who lost a crown, like Christ who found one!” 

“Dovvid!” 

“What?” 

“You must not!” 

“What?” 

“You must not speak tome of...of... 

“Of Christ?” 


99 


I4I 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


“I’ve seen a town burning in his name. I’ve heard 
the shrieks of raped women and seen their bodies split 
when the rape was over. In the name of that man.” 

“You will need as much courage as you can find.” 

“My God, must you still ram courage, courage, down 
my throat? I want none of your courage. Leave me. 
Let me be a coward.” | 

“You must have all the data or you are no true philos- 
opher.” 

“T tell you I saw the priest of Christ lurking in the 
wood that day. I saw his friend that night lift a tiny 
child above his head and crack her on the wall behind 
him.” 

“Coward! What have these things to do with True 
and False, Shadow and Substance, Matter and Spirit, 
Good and Bad? How dare you exile yourself from any 
signpost at all even if the road it shows ends in a 
morass!” 

“Of blood!” 

“Let it be blood! That is the coin with which Truth 
is bought. No, let me say rather, may be bought. Who 
knows Truth’s currency? You? Have you read the 
Gospel of John? Or his Revelation? Or the alleged acts 
of Paul or Peter?” 

“The book of the Christians?” 

“Indeed.” 

“Will you get gone from me?” 

“T will come again.” 

“T am a Jew.” 

“Believe it, Eli, Talmud scholar of Kravno, carpenter 
of Doomington, you are no more Jew than the man 
you speak to.” 

“What do you mean? Why do you torment me? Are 


142 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


you a Jew therefore or no Jew? And I therefore? Don’t 
answer! Leave me!” 

“You will have read those writings when I come again?” 

“May the curse of the God of Israel be upon you! 
Fiend that you are!” 

“Oh, but you will! For the present, good-day, my 
little youth out of the yeshiveh!” 

“Be at my side, God!” 


143 


CHVAGR GE Rim orate 


ELOW the waterproof-goods warehouse where Dov- 
B vid Pollock had his room the River Mitchen lay 

coiled like a black python. The owner of the 
warehouse had once or twice attempted to regain posses- 
sion of the room, for his business was growing; but a ten 
minutes’ interview with Dovvid had on each occasion 
convinced him that Dovvid’s room was precisely the 
last thing in the world he wanted. It was difficult to 
understand how Dovvid stretched his legs or expanded 
his chest without bringing to earth some one or other 
of the crazy tiers of books that staggered and bulged 
everywhere between floor and ceiling. It was no less 
difficult to see how he managed to stand upright and 
take the violin out of its case which stood on a set of 
Latin authors a few feet from his table. “There was a 
possibility that he solaced himself less frequently with the 
instrument than in the days when his father lamented 
its serious interference with the manufacture of ingber. 
Dust lay as thickly on the violin-case as elsewhere in 
the room. There were evidences that at some period 
he had also refreshed his mind with the arts of painting 
and wood-carving. A box of colours and a glass jar 
stuffed with brushes stood on a window-ledge in the 
company of two or three small chisels and a fretwork- 
saw. The bottom of the jar was padded with the corpses 
of flies, and convinced you that the art had failed of its 


144 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


efficacy. But the paintings themselves which those stif- 
fened brushes had evoked would have made you feel with 
even greater certainty that within the limit of his talent 
Dovvid Pollock had reached a desolate, formidable ne 
plus ultra, Whilst he had achieved a sufficiency of 
technique to express, you might have thought, a wide 
range of concepts, he had in fact seemed capable of two 
only, or perhaps not more than one, the apparent duality 
being not more than the obverse and reverse aspects 
of the same truth, or lie. There were stacks of canvases 
against the warped wainscotting; there were canvases 
hanging crookedly on the wall between and behind the 
tiers of books; there were odd canvases piled anywhere. 
All conspired to present one set of features whether they 
were male or female, whether one or the other of two 
constant expressions contorted or petrified them. Either 
the face grinned at you in the last extremity of derision, 
or the face was smitten with a mute hideous despair. 
Another species of blight seemed to have befallen his 
practise of the art of wood-carving, the blight of total 
futility. It was not possible to compute how many 
months in the aggregate, how many years even, had gone 
to the reduplication of those insane carved cigarette- 
boxes which crowded every corner and cracked under 
your feet if you moved several inches in any direction. 
They were decorated with the most fastidious, the most 
pointless of arabesques, and would open with the most 
surprising secrecy and suddenness, projecting a jaw at 
you with a harsh click of teeth-like springs, in disgust at 
your solving their barren, silly secret. You felt that their 
author had gone on elaborating this phantasmal triviality, 
till suddenly he had opened all his lungs against the 
tyranny and had smashed the thing he was engaged on 


145 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


into pulp. Perhaps that very night saw him striding 
across the Pennine Ridge, his kindred hair riding the 
wind. Four months later he was raking manure, per- 
haps, in Puente Viesgo, or piling the cobs of maize in some 
farm in the Pustherthal. 

Not now, at all events, he committed to canvas that 
mocking, frustrate face, nor whittled away insensately 
at little chips of wood. Other sport was his now, fit 
for princes. Now as he heard the tap on his door and 
did not lift his head from the crabbed book that had 
engaged him these six or eight hours... . 

“Come in, Eli,” he said, “I was expecting you.” 

Eli entered. Curiously cocksure he seemed, inflated, 
for a little pale youth out of the yeshiveh. 

“I am very much obliged to you,” he said. 

“You have read it?” 

“Twice, three times.” 

“I hardly—until twenty minutes ago—expected I should 
see you again so soon. Have you given yourself time? 
Twenty minutes ago I was aware of you walking up and 
down at the top of the street, up and down, forward and 
backward, forward and backward.” 

“You didn’t imagine I was summoning up courage to 
come in? Do you think I’m afraid of you: Did you 
think I’d be afraid of your book?” 

“My book?” 

“Why then did you thrust the stuff upon me?” 

“A friend’s purely disinterested desire that his young 
philosophic friend should equip himself with all the data.” 

“Tell me the truth this time. Let me not be mouse 
to your cat any more. Have you come back one of them 
from this last adventure of yours? Did their priests get 
hold of you? Where have you left them?” 

146 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


“TI talked to certain priests in a place called Lourdes, 
a place of miracles, not many miles from the village 
where I kept sheep, the farm at Pierre-Fitte.” 

“Miracle! Pah! All their book gibbers with miracle!” 

“Why should Jehovah have the privilege of miracle? 
Why should he not depute it to his agents? I met a 
family from Kravno in Whitechapel a month ago. They 
were as convinced that your baby finger wrought miracles 
in Kravno as the disciples were convinced Christ’s finger 
wrought them in Bethlehem. And you might have been 
smart enough, even then. It took me years of practice.” 

“Miracle! Tomfoolery!” 

“Scoff as much as you like at miracle in Doomington! - 
But go careful, I warn you, at Lourdes! I heard a 
lawyer from Paris cackle out his mockery behind a line 
of paralytics waiting to be cured. An old man who'd 
never moved a limb for twenty years heard him and 
jumped from his couch. You should have seen his eyes 
blazing. He smote the lawyer across the mouth and 
filled it with teeth!” 

“What is this place? Do all their conjurors and cheap- 
jacks gather there?” 

“Many. And others beside. A little girl of the 
peasants maintained that she beheld a vision there of the 
Jewess, Mary, eighteen times. This was thirty or forty 
years ago, I think. The Jewess, Mary, 1s the woman 
they think of as the Mother of God.” 

“Blasphemy! Idolaters!” 

“And in the faith of that vision, sick men and women 
gather at a grotto there in the hope of miracle. I saw 
it happen one day as I passed through the place with a 
drove of sheep. I saw it happen again with a woman 
at my side, a fancy woman of mine from Bordeaux. 


147 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


She fell to the ground whimpering and must have crawled 
away from me on her belly. I never saw her again.” 

“You accept the whole mummery of miracle?” 

“That is irrelevant. If I saw a fakir climb his serpent, 
I should report that to you also. In such a case, we 
would both recognize the greater likelihood of trickery, 
or at least of vulgar trickery. The susceptible observer 
will find himself more impressed, the sceptic more 
puzzled, at Lourdes than at Benares. One thing is 
certain. The illustrious faith we were born into seems 
to have suspended its accredited thaumaturgisms nearly 
three thousand years ago. Christianity-———” 

“There is no moment in the tragic tale of our per- 
sistence which is not itself a miracle!” 

“If you were as skilful a humorist as you are a debater 
what a companion you'd be for a walk in the country! 
I am not out to win you to a point of view. I am merely 
stating dispassionate facts. Here is a living faith, the 
faith of Lourdes and Rome, which still has influence 
enough with the Authorities to induce them to reverse 
the laws of nature. I admit the whole business is a 
vulgarisation of the earlier tradition. We don’t get the 
ocean split like a cherry cake or the sun arrested on 
his journey. We can’t even aspire to a charitable re- 
duplication of the loaves and fishes. But there’s lots 
of hope for lockjaw and cancer of the breast. Confess 
that attested miracle is an a priori argument in their 
favour. Did you ever see sciatica cured in the shadow 
of the Ark? Look out, Eli, look out! Wait tll your 
special little miracle. . . .” 

“They seized you then. You are Christ’s man.” 

“Neither Christ’s man nor Lucifer’s.” 

“Christ’s man or God’s. There is no other division.” 

148 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


“Let us put modern miracle aside then and any corro- 
boration that may lend. I gather that your reading of 
the New Testament did not so much impress you as it 
impressed certain of your predecessors in the yeshivehs 
of Antioch and Alexandria.” 

“I cannot think that any competently trained rabbinic 
intelligence of the last few centuries could be so easily 
imposed on. ‘The rabbinic philosophy has grown stronger 
and subtler with the lapse of time. Their own case has 
remained fixed in its invalidity. Let me bring back to 
your notice, for instance, the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
If any medieval rabbi had ventured so weak a case (for 
it is more than an epistle, it is a disputation), a case so | 
undocumented, so full of feeble analogy and false in- 
ference, he would have been laughed out of the synagogue 
and twitted into oblivion.” 

“Still scrabbling, Eli, on your cliff-edge path? Still 
no temptation to leave the miserable safety of the mind 
and trust to the soul’s chance?” 

“What chance?” 

“Accept Christ not impostor, not self-gulled, not the 
fabrication of his friends, for just five minutes. Accept 
him the Son of God. What follows:” 

“Can you tell me?” 

elican-t,? 

“Why do you not try?” 

“T live in Limbo, outcast from Hell and Heaven.” 

“Why do you persist there?” 

“Eli, Eli, if you knew how much more amusing it 
VASHON te 

“What will you not sacrifice to your Moloch of mirth? 
When your father lay gasping on his death-bed. . . .” 

“Quiet, you little fool, quiet! Shall I brain you? 


149 


DIAS OUR AONE SV 


Shall I wait till.night comes and tip you like refuse into 
the river below? Or will they recognize it as a man’s 
body if I do it in broad daylight?” 

“That way you won’t frighten me, Dovvid, by way 
of my miserable body. Why do you hound my spirit, 
why do you persecute me!” 

“Come, come, Eli, grant that that is unfair, at least! 
The last time we met, do you remember the pretty 
names you called me—fiend, ghoul? You track me 
down into the one region in Doomington where even 
the chance of making an extra sixpence overtime will 
not keep our brethren from Begley Hill a minute after 
the whistle’s gone. You find me harmlessly engaged 
upon the nightmares of the Physiologus, mildly wondering 
why the Almighty has not the good taste to imitate the 
order of bestial nature so humorously contrived for Him 
all the way down from Tatian and Origen to Philippe 
de Thaun—a foreigner like ourselves in this distinguished 
country. Conceive your excitement, Eli, when next you 
went cruising beyond Hawaii and, landing upon an island, 
found it was in truth an aspidochelone. Conceive the 
agreeable world it would be if the Lord suspended the 
creation of the owl, the night hawk, and the cuckoo, 
the little owl, the great owl, and the swan, the pelican, the 
gier eagle, and the cormorant—such dull creatures that 
He thought them not worth the eating and expressly urged 
us to refrain from so doing—conceive the whirring of 
wings in the heavens, the scuffing and shrieking, if they 
were full of the flight of the hoopoe, the phcenix, the © 
charadrius, that prophetic curlew from the cleft mountains 
that is wiser than all the doctors. . 

“Eh, what is it? You bring it on yourself, this gentle, 
semi-scholarly persiflage. Why are you so pale? Why 

150 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


are you wringing your hands as if to-day were the Ninth 
of Ab and the Temple this very day was destroyed? 
Why do you beat your breast, Eli?” 

“On the Ninth of Ab the first Temple was destroyed, 
the second was also. Are they all destroyed for me this 
day, for ever and for ever, all the temples of my race 
that were built and pulled down, that shall be built and 
shall not be pulled down? 

“Whither have you sent me, Dovvid, into what wilder- 
ness? 

“I that should kiss your feet, Dovvid, why should I 
rather plant a knife at your heart?” 

“You are ill, and just a little mad, my friend. You've . 
been reading too hard, lately. You should have taken 
Paul, for instance, more temperately. You can’t gobble 
him in a week-end.” 

“Suppose it is all true, Dovvid. God knows it isn’t 
true. What happens to Leah? Such an infant she is, 
for all her grown-up way of managing us. Like a big, 
solemn baby with her wig, playing at being a woman. 
Did you forget my small son, Dovvid, when you came 
into my life again? . . . God, O my God, which are you, 
demon of death or angel of morning?” 

“Say for your own part you know it’s all false. Will 
you? Will your” 

“There is no true or false in Limbo, Eli. That zs 
Limbo.” 

“What is to become of us!” 

“Oh, there will be much for you to do.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You begin to tire me. You're too insistent. Dry 
your eyes, man. You sicken me.” 

“I know, I know. Such stupidity it all is. Ill get 

ISI 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


back to the Moreh Nebuchim, the Guide to the Perplexed, 
that my perplexity also may not last long. I'll get 
back to the old men in the synagogue chanting the 
Mishna by candle-light, to the good smell of whiskey and 
salt herring. I'll expound the Torah to them more wisely 
than they have heard it before. TIl be in Kravno again 
before the flaming roof-beams fell in on us. [’ll be out 
with Leah in the pine-woods telling her parables from 
Rabbi Akiba. We heard the doves in the high tops and 
saw the white flick of rabbits’ tails. Let us be, Dovvid, 
let us be as we are.” 

“Get out, my friend, get out. Go and glut yourself 
till you burst on salt herring. Leave me to my phenixes 
and salamanders. What, don’t you know how to take 
your leave yet from a man who’s sick of you? What 
are you standing there for?” 

Many minutes Eli stood there motionless in the 
threshold, his mouth half-open as if he had desired to 
speak. Such a forlornness lay upon his face that you 
might think not only had that desire ebbed from him, 
but the desire to breathe, to be. Strange, beyond all 
utterance, strange, that now having found what he had 
all these years sought, he felt only the tomb encompass 
him. 

Eerily from minute to minute page added itself to 
grotesque page in the book Dovvid Pollock sat reading 
so absorbedly. “So doth the ichneumon clothe itself with 
mud that the unaware dragon may be slain, even as the 
enhydris entereth the crocodile’s mouth... . 

“Get out, little Christ-boy, or I’ll strangle you!” 


152 


CHAPTER FOUR 


ow at last, Leah recognized joyfully, Doomington 
was beginning to pay Eli something like his due. 


Leah had her little vanities. She could not dis- 
guise from herself the pleasure it gave her to see the 
women nudge each other in the grocery shop when she 
came in to make a purchase. “That’s the wife of Reb 
Eli,” they were saying, “the young gaon, the Talmud 
scholar. They say he could hide in his trouser pocket 
everything that Rabbi Asher and Rabbi Pinchas and 
all the other rabbis put together can teach you. So 
frum, too, it’s like at home in Russia. God only should 
give him long years in the land.” 

There was all the social difference in the world be- 
tween the closed end of Jilk Street and the open end, 
which partook of the superior nature of Petley Street, 
from which Jilk Street ran at right angles. It was, to be 
precise, the social difference between Leah’s little parlour- 
shop that sold zngber and depended on the play-time 
farthings of Ealing Street School and Mrs. Levitsky’s 
smoked salmon-and-delicatessen stores which had even 
been known to make up railway orders for Olympian 
Jews residing in Stockport and Blackpool. When Mrs. 
Levitsky and her quintuple row of tooth-like yellow pearls 
called upon Leah one Friday evening and nibbled at some 
of her home-made pastry, it was almost too dizzy an 
acknowledgment of Eli’s talmudic eminence. Polite 
formalities being exchanged, the object of Mrs. Levitsky’s 


153 


DAYIOER ATONE MENT 


call was seen to have some sort of juridical basis. Her 
daughter, Rosie, had been for two years courted by Mr. 
Abram Ginsberg, a master-tailor, and during that period 
had received a number of expensive presents. Mr. Gins- 
berg had lately been prostrated by a stroke, and his 
mental powers being for the time in abeyance, neither 
Mrs. Levitsky nor the Ginsberg family thought a con- 
tinuance of the engagement desirable. The question at 
issue was this—the éngagement-ring being restored, of 
course, without discussion—was it incumbent upon Miss 
Levitsky to restore his remaining presents also to their 
donor or had she not a moral right to retain them? The 
question did not lie in the precise significance of the word 
“present.” It was a more philosophic matter. It was 
true that if the presents were not restored and Mr. Gins- 
berg should at any time recover his mental health com- 
pletely, being in possession of no amatory stock-in-trade 
he would be badly handicapped in the prosecution of an- 
other affair. On the other hand, should the presents be 
restored—and Mrs. Levitsky presented this aspect of 
the case at once firmly yet without vulgar heat—was it 
not evident that two years of Miss Levitsky’s life, those 
especial years associated with the receipt of delicate com- 
pliments to a young lady’s sex and appearance, was it 
not evident that these two years must be considered com- 
pletely stultified? There would not be wanting harsh 
critics who would to some slight extent connect Miss 
Levitsky with Mr. Ginsberg’s regrettable paralytic stroke. 
In that case the retention of the presents was the more 
imperative as an insurance against any fall in the Miss 
Ginsberg quotations. ... 

Mrs. Levitsky concluded rightly that not only the 
Talmud itself took pre-cognizance of such a situation 


154 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON. 


but that Eli would interpret it with as much justice and 
generosity as any laborious conclave of rabbis and arbi- 
trators to whom it might normally have been submitted. 
This was not the first compliment of this nature paid 
to Eli, nor the last. Leah could perceive it embarrassed 
him, but she was of the opinion that no harm was done 
in the bestowal upon Eli of a fraction of the recognition 
due to him. 

Eli had never actually received the smichah, the certif- 
icate of rabbinic qualification, entitling him to those 
final hieratic judgments as delivered by the established 
rabbis. Now and again these days he came back from 
the synagogue reporting awkwardly that one worthy and 
another had been suggesting that the time was ripe for 
him to seal his position with the smichah. New associa- 
tions of immigrants into little sequestered synagogues 
were being formed—new chevrahs they called themselves. 
Eli would be able to give up carpentering if he seized his 
Opportunity and might shortly occupy the seat of one 
of these new chevrahs as its rabbi. Later he might come 
over to the Ukrainer Chevrah, which he had attended 
from the beginning, for old Rabbi Pinchas could not con- 
tinue quite indefinitely. Later still, perhaps, the big 
synagogues on the Begley Hill Road ... perhaps some 
day, the call to London would summon him to the supreme 
chair itself, the Chief Rabbinate. .-. . 

Leah’s mind had far outrun the scope of those casual 
invitations on the part of odd greybeards in the syna- 
gogue. Nevertheless, their solicitations grew in strength. 
The old men came over to Jilk Street occasionally and 
broached the subject to her. She held her hand to her 
heart. She blushed with pleasure. 

“There is time yet, time yet,” she would say, loyally 


155 


DAY OF ATONE M ENT. 


echoing Eli’s words. “The Torah is deep as the ocean, 
no? Has my man drained it?” 

The old men beamed. Such a wife should be an ex- 
ample to all Israel! But inwardly she said: “Soon, 
soon, my Eli! God cannot delay the time long now!” 

So too, but with a different inflection, the heart of 
Eli tolled, “Soon, soon! God cannot delay the time long 
now! Delay it, God, delay it, a hundred, a thousand 
years!” 

There had never been any mitigation of the punc- 
tiliousness of Eli’s Judaism. At no period could any- 
body have pointed out a single Jew in Doomington of 
whom it could be said he was more correct and laborious 
in his piety than Eli. If ever the ghost of an idea pre- 
sented itself to Eli that this prayer or this duty might 
be omitted or curtailed—so intricate a thread of philo- 
sophic argument was he pursuing and so difficult it might 
be to resume it again—the thought of the pain, the stupe- 
faction even, which such a proceeding would involve for 
Leah, was more than enough to lay the ghost. What if 
Leah were serving a customer or buying in, what if he 
himself were in the synagogue: how could Leah possibly 
guess that something had been omitted or curtailed? The 
very thought of such a betrayal, should it occur to him, 
would have made him sick with self-disgust. 

But all this is folly. How should such a thought 
occur to him? How should he be consciously aware 
that all these years all this infinite and eternal reduplica- 
tion of prayers, all the enormous unquestioned complex of 
obedience had been a mere mechanical function? If ever 
in a moment of morbidity he had reproached himself that 
the whole of his spirit became alive only when prayers 
and obediences were ended and he turned to the prosecu- 

156 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


tion of his studies, he would have received all the con- 
solation he needed in the pages of the Shulchan Aruch, 
that great codex of Jewish law. “The study of Torah,” 
it was written, “is regarded as- equal to fulfilling all the 
commands.” Or again, “When a man is judged in the 
divine judgment, he is judged first according to the man- 
ner in which he has devoted himself to the study of the 
Torah, and afterwards he is judged according to his acts.” 

He needed no such consolation. No man could point 
out that he had neglected a jot of his pious duties. But it 
could not be doubted—not even Leah could doubt it—that 
a change had lately come into the manner of Eli’s fulfil- 
ment of them. How to define it? He threw himself into’ 
them with a fervour more typical of the chassidim than of 
the more scholarly Jews of his own tradition. He chanted 
the prayers more vigorously than even Leah remembered. 
A listener schooled in the niceties of tone might have de- 
tected now a certain urgency of defiance, now a certain 
agony of despair. He might have heard a formula val- 
iantly and again valiantly reiterated, till of a moment it 
seemed that the efficacy of the formula had come to 
naught on the tongue, like a rotted hazel-nut. Then fol- 
lowed the beating of the bosom, the hands helplessly 
clapped together as if thus they might evoke a rock to 
stand firm on, ere the swirling waters tempested him away 
towards that other rock, that other rock whose security 
was so much more fearful to him than any shipwreck, the 
rock of Christ. 

Days would come when he seemed less involved .in cur- 
rents so impetuous; the whole conflict was withdrawn 
behind the dark, abstracted eyes and pale brows. These 
days he spent entirely at home saving for the three 
absences in the synagogue for the three daily services. 


157 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


He did not settle down among the old men with the huge, 
yellow volumes before him, expounding the law, expound- 
ing it with so strange a violence that they shook their grey 
ear-locks and were half afraid. He sat down in the 
kitchen in Jilk Street and savoured the odour of his home; 
Leah preparing the ingber or melting the sugar for the 
apples to be dipped in it. Or Leah sitting by his side, 
cooling, soothing his hard, hot hands that had been so 
soft once when they turned the sacred pages in Kravno, 
in the yeshiveh. And Reuben, his small son, with the 
jaded white hen against his bosom, the hen that lived in 
the coop under the sink and had survived the mortal 
threat of so many Sabbath dinners. Why this hen more 
than any other hen in the world? Why did Reuben carry 
down all its predecessors and successors with such indif- 
ference to the slaughterers, hear their last glutinous 
screams as they fluttered and wallowed in their long, 
manger-like boxes while the gutter bore away their blood? 
What affinity had the child found of a sudden between 
the sooty creature and himself that he talked to it for fif- 
teen minutes—a condition of prolixity entirely unknown 
hitherto in the annals of Reuben? And henceforth the 
creature must be lifted to his bosom morning and night, 
when he rose out of bed and before he returned to it. 
What did this portend? ,Or had it no meaning? A blind, 
disrelated whim? 

Inscrutable child, whither, whither goest thou? Shall 
I be at thy side for long? If I dare the dark places, be- 
cause they are so supernally bright so much the darker 
for me, wilt thou take my hand and go with me? She 
also, the lovely one, thy little mother, will she come also? 

Back, demon, back! Leave me to my sweet twilight! 
Leah, my dove, my frail one, and my child, Reuben! 

158 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


Nor were books allowed to interpose themselves be- 
tween them and him these evenings. He seemed, in fact, 
to have suspended of late his reading of outlandish vol- 
umes in English and German, even those to be deemed 
more tolerable as written by Jews. Like Spinoza. Leah 
could not conceal from herself that she was glad of it. 
Surely there was enough for one head a few inches big 
each way in the enormous tomes of Mishna and Talmud? 
It meant also that Dovvid Pollock did not need to come 
from time to time with some new writer under his arm 
to set Eli wrinkling his forehead and robbing himself of 
sleep. There was no explaining why, but she was not 
happy when Dovvid Pollock came. Apart from the fact. 
that he still, and still almost pointedly, refrained from 
talking Yiddish, his behaviour was unexceptionable. To 
him at least it never occurred to remove his hat in a 
Jewish household. Whenever he accepted a drink of tea 
and a bit of cake (if there was such a thing in the house) 
he recited his blessing as clearly as a bell. What then? 
Oh, it was not her business to argue out these things. 
She was not happy when he came, not completely happy. 
That is a reason, yes? Enough! She would go dancing 
with him on weddings, she muttered ironically . . . She 
allowed her head to rest on Eli’s shoulder. 

“How goes it with thee, Eli?” she asked, somewhat 
coyly for her. 

Why, O why should he suddenly bend and cover her 
cheeks with kisses? Why should he suddenly press her 
so close that she must have cried out if her lips were free? 
Why should he suddenly do these things? 

And why should he not? 


159 


CHAP TERY RLV 


I 


oLsEy AVENUE swept round in a fine crescent 

Wy towards Doomington Road and the river. It 

was situated on the border of the town that 

thinned out into the north-western moors. Not for the 

first time that morning Eli, hoping that somewhere in the 

freer air light might be granted him or, more mercifully, 

abstracted from him completely, bent his steps hither. 
Light was not to be denied him. 

Mrs. Travers of Oakdene, Honorary Treasurer to the 
All Saints’ Anglo-Catholic Women’s Mission, needed as a 
rule no vigorous persuasion to discourse on any subject 
that might interest her sister-missioners. She was a 
kindly well-to-do widow who spent her days in close asso- 
ciation with other kindly well-to-do widows engaged upon 
the conversion of the Jews in Doomington by the indirect 
methods of nursing their sick and ministering to their 
poor, in so far as the efficient and jealous Jewish societies 
allowed them any scope for these activities. Other mis- 
sions might preoccupy themselves with black men, yellow 
men, creatures who were almost hypothetical abstractions. 
You had merely to walk along Begley Hill Road and turn 
down into Green Bower to know how much more impera- 
tive work lay to hand. The Mission had been established 
eight years and had a total of three conversions to its 

160 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


credit, not wholly satisfactory ones. The first convert was 
at that moment serving a term of years in Doomington 
gaol; the two others, a brother and a sister, were of such 
feeble mentality that the most enthusiastic ladies in the 
Mission could not convince themselves that their defec- 
tion dangerously shook the stubborn fortress of Jewry. 

And then this young Jew, Eli... a young rabbi, it 
was gathered .. . it could not fail to have the most vio- 
lent repercussion throughout Begley Hill and Longton, all 
the way down to the comfortable southern suburbs. In- 
deed it did not fail of its repercussion. 

“The Hand of God,” that was about as much as you 
could get out of Mrs. Travers. It was at least a curious © 
coincidence. When she stepped out of Oakdene that Fri- 
day morning, closing the garden-gate behind her with one 
hand and holding tightly with the other on to her silver 
net-bag with its list of names and addresses and small sub- 
scriptions, she was in fact on her way to All Saints, a 
church in the Blenheim Road, on the fringe of Begley 
Hill, to attend the second monthly meeting of the Mission 
for the conversion of all the Elis in Doomington. She did 
not further signalize the day as the eighth on which the 
workers of the Victoria Cabinet Works were locked out 
because of some contumacious demand for a halfpenny per 
hour rise in wages. Nor did the crushed pale creature 
whose ribs had been pressed into his lungs three or four 
minutes ago by the wheel of the huge dray that had no 
business at all to be driving through a residential thor- 
oughfare like Wolsey Avenue, neither did he any longer 
concern himself with strikes and wages, as he lay bleeding 
there in the roadway. 

Mrs. Travers knew the symptoms, for her missionary 
labours had resolved themselves almost entirely into nurs- 


161 


DAY) OF ATRONL MENT 


ing. She knew the meaning of that gush of blood from 
the mouth, those sharp breaths, that deadly swoon. 

“Quick!” she cried to the drayman imperiously. The 
small crowd that had gathered parted as she stooped down 
to the man’s heart. “Quick, tear off that boarding from 
the back of your cart!” 

The drayman was green with fright. “I ’ollered to ’im, 
mam, to get out o’ t’road,” he explained, his eyes starting 
from his head. “An’ I thought ’e ’eered too. All mazed 
’e was like. Next think I know t’wheel’s bumpin’... 
summat-soit, like’a sack.)- “Christ?” T’said/* aces 

Mrs. Travers turned away from him impatiently. 

“Will somebody pull that boarding off its hinges!” she 
commanded. Two stalwart youths obeyed her. “You 
run for a doctor! The rest of you lift him as carefully as 
you can on to this board! No, no, more gently! Don’t 
touch him at all on that side! By the shoulders and 
the thighs,so! Take him into my house—Oakdene, there, 
the next but one. [’ll go and get the door opened. Don’t 
rock him, men! Get out of step! So!” 

“The Hand of God”... Mrs. Travers on her way 
down to All Saints, her mind full of the affairs of the Mis- 
sion to the Doomington Jews, and the young Jew, Eli, 
crushed almost to death at her doorstep. It was not right 
to say “young Jew” exactly nor by any means “young 
Christian.” Yet something had been done, some ground 
had been covered. It was not exclusively the mir- 
aclesl een. 

That was the point, the miracle... . That was why 
the ladies at All Saints regretted so keenly that Mrs. 
Travers did not show herself the affable, talkative Mrs. 
Travers they knew her for. She would talk if you pressed 
her. But you didn’t feel yourself quite justified in do- 

162 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


ing that. She had, of course, told all she knew to Father 
Carter and Father Hastings, and that’s where the matter 
lay. 

Excepting, of course, for the young man’s astonishing 
career among the Doomington Jews. Rumours came 
through to All Saints; but the authorities there felt almost 
from the beginning they could have no formal connection 
with him . . . his extraordinary methods. 

The miracle ... all vague it was and blurred. Mrs. 
Travers would certainly never have anticipated that if her 
own solid, comfortable Doomington house should some 
day be elected by inscrutable God to be the scene of .«. . 
oh! a miracle, what else could you call it? ... she — 
should find herself so tongue-tied about it all. Of course 
the young man had not specifically told her, nor had he 
any the more attempted to conceal anything from her. 
But she had mainly been left to learn what she could from 
the poor lad’s lips (after all, he was only a boy) at night, 
when he lay straining against his bandages, sweating in 
his weakness, moaning . . . till suddenly the light of the 
recollection flooded his eyes and once more he saw... 
once more the miracle enacted itself, vouchsafed to a 
humble little carpenter in Doomington. 

How could she ask him to say more fully what had 
happened that sixth day after his coming into her house? 
It was the sixth day and at six in the early evening. She 
had come in not many minutes after. His eyes were 
still large with the vision terrible and splendid. His ears 
still strained for the voice, the voice. What else was 
there for her to do than to wait if peradventure she should 
choose to tell her what had been? 

Something she had learned. Much there was she 
hardly dared desire to learn. But that was not wholly 

163 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


why she could not bring herself to make the thing a 
tea-table topic among her sister-missioners. She had 
some inkling of the bliss that sometimes made the young 
man as difficult of speech as he had been that first 
day, when he had opened his eyes again in the cool grey 
room at Oakdene. She sometimes saw him as speechless 
with bliss as he had then been with pain. But she had 
an inkling of that other pain, not of the body, which had 
thrust itself like swords into him when it became clearer 
and ever clearer what path he must henceforth tread. 

There was still something more that kept her aloof 
about it all and silent, however much she tried to escape 
the thought, the reproach, the anguish. It was not less 
than anguish, the recollection of that young, distraught 
Jewess, the wife of the convert. Her name was Leah. 

It was not more than a day or two after Eli had left 
Oakdene. When they told her that the late invalid’s wife 
wished to see her, she had felt some discomfort about it. 
After all she had behaved as any decent woman would 
behave who had the means and a house with space 
enough. It was out of the question to allow him to be 
taken off to hospital those early days with the lungs 
abraded and the pleural membrane seriously injured. 
The doctor himself had said that removal at this stage 
might endanger the man’s life; it could hardly fail to add 
a month or two or three to the duration of his illness. 
When he had turned the corner, it seemed foolish not to 
allow him to get on with his convalescence there. The 
man had had no right to insist on going so soon, the fifth 
week after the accident. The strap-bandages had been 
removed only four days before. 

Mrs. Travers had had experience enough of the poorer 
class of Jewish women, how voluble they were. How- 


164 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


ever, the poor creature must have had an anxious time 
of it these five weeks. Well, it would soon be over, the 
torrent of thanks, the weeping. 

It was not the young woman’s reproaches, her shrill 
taunts, that Mrs. Travers remembered. ‘These had their 
day soon. But when the poor girl lay crumpled at her 
feet, her fingers clutching piteously at the air, and no 
sound issued from her save a sort of hurt blind, moaning 
like an animal whose eyes have been dragged from their 
sockets to gratify some fiend’s whimsy—then she seemed 
more grievous a sight than her husband crushed in the 
roadway, with the blood spurting from his mouth. 

“How strange,” she thought, “how strange”—even at . 
that moment it seemed stranger that her mind should have 
room to think it—“how strange that so lovely a girl as 
this (look at her eyelashes) should have shorn her hair 
to put on this hideous wig? Poor little hurt girl! Christ 
take you also, my darling, into his keeping!” 

But the girl did not weep, did not once weep, even upon 
that evening when he told her what had befallen, and she 
was white as snow by moonlight. Never, never till the 


ending of her days did Leah, the wife of Eli, weep again. 


II 


He could not wholly suppress the philosophic quality 
of his mind, not wholly, though the mind that survived 
seemed battered under the appalling collapse of body. 
He could not help wondering how mind remained con- 
scious of its separateness or returned to that conscious- 
ness when the frame that housed it endured such pain. 
Slowly, but with infinite labour, for each mental move- 
ment seemed accompanied by a harsh, swift breath which 

165 


DAY OF ATONE M ENT 


was like the closing in of the lungs upon a saw, slowly 
his mind adjusted itself to further consciousness. He 
became aware of the tall grey walls and the grey, cool 
curtains before the window, then of the many pillows 
propped behind him, behind the precise point where the 
ruin had its fierce focus. Then he became aware that 
never had there been so large a room as this in the world 
or so large a bed. Where was he? What had happened? 
Where was Leah? 

A woman stood beside him, her features barely visible in 
the mild light of a lamp some yards away. 

“Madam,” he said. But his throat and tongue had lost 
their use. The noise seemed as little as the rubbing to- 
gether of leaves. O the saw, the teeth of the saw in the 
lungs! 

“Hush!” she said, “hush! All will be well with you. 
You must not speak. I found your union card in your 
pocket and have sent to the address on it. Only just nod 
your head if you wish to say ‘Yes.’ You have a wife 
there?” 

Yes. 

“She will come before long. She will understand that 
the best will be done for you. You must not worry. If 
your illness will cause any difficulty at home, that will be 
seen to. Iam talking too much toyou. The doctor can’t 
be very long now.” 

MARY ASN RS nay Oye 

“Poor lad, poor lad. Yes. He will do something to 
relieve you. Soon, soon, quiet, soon!” 

He felt her place a little ice in his mouth, beyond his 
blue lips, a thin film of ice. Yes, she must be thinking 
these are seconds, seconds, tolling away on that high 
clock in the corner. Years, years, divisions of time each 

166 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


more enormous than time, and all of them confused and 
confounded with each other into one moment of un- 
plumbed pain. The doctor did not come, he would never 
come. Where was Leah, why did she delay, she would be 
so terrified when they told her. No, Leah, it is not so 
dreadful as they are pretending. It will be over soon. 
She said the doctor can’t be very long now. He will do 
something to relieve me. Who is she? She has a low 
voice. It is not so dreadful as they say, child, do not 
fear for me. 

Should I have to tell you, Leah, that I have gone to 
Christ . . . Leah, Leah, my little dove, will that not be 
more terrible for you? . . . soon, soon upon this side or 
upon that side, there cannot be much delaying. 

O God, how merciful thou art. There can be no think- 
ing now. Thou hast put an end to thinking. How shall 
the mind still labour with a saw sawing through the 
bones? 

I will declare the decree, sang David. The Lord hath 
said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten 
thee. 

Why dost thou sing in riddles, thou who singest? 
Make the dark word plain, singer of Israel. 

I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son 
of man came with the clouds of heaven... . 

There can be na thinking now, with a saw sawing 
through the bones . . . not now, not ever. Let there be 
an end to it. 

And when the sun was darkened that day and the veil 
of the Temple was rent in the midst, did the moments 
seem even as years, as to me now? 

This ice upon my tongue, kind, kind lady... . 

And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, 

167 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


and filled it with vinegar and put it on a reed, and gave 
him to drink. ... 

Thou? Leah? My dove, be not afraid. No, kind 
lady, I will not move. I will not excite myself. I know 
well how frightened thou art and how brave a courage 
thou puttest on, little Leah. 

“Eli, thou must lie very still, beloved. It will heal 
soon, she says. A few weeks, at most. I may not stay 
more than a few moments now. But to-morrow a few 
‘moments more and the morrow after a few moments 
more. When thou art fit, I shall bring thee meichelach, 
little things to eat cooked flimsy as vapour. She will 
let me, yes? She thinks thou shalt stay here. It will 
be better for thee than in the hospital. She is a widow 
and her son died in a foreign land. A young chicken 
I shall buy like for any prince. 

“She says she hears a ring at the door. The doctor. 
I shall go now. To-morrow ... no, do not speak, do 
not move. Ah, that it had been me, my jewel. On thy 
brow, so. It will be well with the child. Fear not. God 
be at thy side.” 

On my brow, lips like silk, like petals. Sweet child, 
well I know thy heart breaks. It will be well soon. 

What, Leah, what is it, my child? Why, as thou turn- 
est once more to flutter a last breath to me, why do thine 
eyes grow wild with horror? What is it that hath ar- 
rested them on their way to me, to my own eyes? What? 
Something on the wall yonder, in the niche opposite my 
bed? A shining of pale ivory, Leah. It is a cross! Nor 
had I seen it before! I adjure thee by God I had not 
seen it before! And Christ hanging upon the cross, his 
head on his shoulders! ‘There are nails in his hands and 
in his feet! There is a wound in his thigh! Leah, Leah, 

168 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


I did not place it there! How should I, I that am so 
weak, so full of pain? Would God I were dead, Leah, 
would God I were dead! 


‘III 


That strange state of suspension which followed the in- 
jection of morphia . . . the pain ached and ebbed, ached 
and ebbed, then became dull, tolerable. But why hung 
he so suspended, his body strapped tight above and be- 
low his injuries like an Egyptian mummy in its wrappings, 
why hung he s» suspended between ceiling and floor? 
What did it portend? Now he seemed like a tree hacked 
from its roots, now like a tree whose branches were lost 
in congealed gloom. Who desired him? None in the 
world? Was he homeless henceforth, a wanderer? A 
thousand times more hopelessly adrift than all his drift- 
ing race, bound to each other by a million tendrils spread- 
ing over all the lands, deep-rooted in a millennial pride and 
glory and shame. When they had hounded him out into 
‘the wilderness, would they open out their arms to him, 
the others? The priest muttering secrets in the pine-wood 
with the smell of blood already in his beard and the smoke 
from burned homesteads already black ir the hollow of 
his eyes? He also? Must he be his brother now? 
Sergei, his brother? 

Was this what it portended, this suspension between 
ceiling and floor? Was there no struggling back again 
to his bed despite all its woe? Was he doomed to lhe 
stretched out here for ever along the homeless, middle 
air? 

At last his exhaustion and the drug were too much 
for him. He lay propped upon his pillows sleeping 

169 


DANT OE VAT ONE MCENGE 


heavily, his lips dead blue, his face yellow as the ivory 
cross in the niche over against his bed. 

“He'll be all right now for a few hours. On no ac- 
count must he move the fraction of an inch. Yes, [ll 
have a nurse sent round at once. It’s not my business of 
course, Mrs. Travers, but it’s uncommonly good of you 
to insist on keeping him like this, though it’s difficult to 
see that anything else could have been done with safety. 
Of course you start off with the weakest fluid diet, the 
usual thing, then gradually strengthen up to fish and 
white meat, and so on. What’s that? His wife?” 

“I gather they’re very orthodox people. I think I 
said he’s a Jew, a working-man from the Begley Hill 
district?” 

“O yes, he’s a Jew right enough. Curiously refined 
sort of face for a Jew. Yet an accident like this is often 
enough to make a bargee look like a fairy prince. Yes?” 

“The poor woman seemed very apprehensive about the 
food he was going to get. Not kosher you know, not 
kosher. When he got on to something more substantial, 
she begged with tears in her eyes, could she be allowed to 
bring up his food for him; chicken, she said, and little 
things she knew he liked. You have no idea, Doctor 
Humphries, how much importance these poorer Jews at- 
tach to kosher, even in cases of danger like this. She 
seemed to be taking it so much to heart that I almost felt 
I might 4 

“Tush and nonsense, Mrs. Travers, tush and non- 
sense. I'll have him packed off to hospital if there’s any 
monkeying about with his diet. Sorry to make myself 
so plain, but I can trust you, and I’m going to trust no- 
body else. That’s clear?” 

170 





DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


“You can rely on me. Thank you. We'll be seeing 
you to-morrow then?” 

“Yes, about ten. Good-night, Mrs. Travers.” 

“Good-night, Doctor Humphries.” 


The next embarrassing request came from the patient 
himself. Embarrassing was hardly the word for it. How 
could you, on the one hand, deny it, when the poor man 
enunciated it with the greatest difficulty, blood thickening 
in his throat?’ How could you, on the other hand, gratify 
it when by so doing you were nullifying the very work 
you and your friends at All Saints had been so laboriously 
and expensively prosecuting for so many years? 2 

What would Father Carter and Father Hastings have 
recommended? 

She heard him cough again, saw the sweat gather on 
his brow with the pain of it. She saw him look at her 
piteously like a dog. After all, for the present the matter 
was in the hands of Doctor Humphries. 

“, .. before my wife comes. For myself I do not 
care. But my wife, she is not very broad-minded. .. .” 

So Mrs. Travers rose from the chair beside his 
bed, went over and drew the heavy black velvet curtain 
across the niche where Christ hung upon his ivory 
cross. 

It was thither that Leah’s eyes turned the moment 
she entered the room that evening, even before she 
sought out Eli’s eyes. They rested full upon him, shin- 
ing. “I thank thee,” they said. “I thank rather the 
kind lady. How kind a lady she is although she is only 
a Christian!” Then her lips said: “How goes it with 
thee, birdkin? How is the pain?” 


171 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


“Less, less. It is not hard to bear.” 

“The Above One be thanked! To-morrow I may bring 
Reuben. She asks: “He is no noisy child? He will not 
disturb our sick one?” I say—I just manage to say it 
and she to understand it—I say: “Would that our 
Reuben, if only a little, were a noisy child! He is too 
quiet. He sits like a log thinking of nothing all day!” 
She smiles. She has a smile you might almost say a 
Jewish one.” 

“She is a kind lady like our own mothers.” 

“Hush! Not yet must thou talk! To-morrow and 
the day after will also be a day. Alas, one thing only! 
She tells me that the doctor says it will be dangerous if 
I bring thee little meichelach from home. . . . I must not 
bring them for two weeks or three. It says in the Torah, 
does it not, that a sick man may eat even upon a fast? 
Is it not written also that a man may eat—how shall I 
say it, Eli?—what is not proper, not clean, when he is 
very sick? I say this to thee that thou mayst take heart, 
beloved. Thou must eat what is given thee and get 
well, and when thou comest home it shall be what thy 
heart desires—varrennikas in the fat of fowls, eh, and 
. .. yes, yes, yes, thou shalt have thy broad beans.” 

Lying little maiden, he knew how bravely she lied. 
He knew how both her pride and piety were hurt that 
they refused to gratify her. She had more confidence 
in the work of her own kosher fingers, working in the 
way the Law enjoined, than in the labours of the most 
fastidious and costly sick-room kitchen in Europe. In- 
deed, had he not himself the same confidence? 

“It is time to go now, beloved. To-morrow then. Thy 
son also.” 

Reuben came with her on the morrow. He was dumb 

172 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


with misery to see his father in such pain. The cough- 
ing of blood had ceased now, the breathing was a little 
easier. But the face was still desperately haggard. For 
many minutes the child said nothing; he merely looked 
wretchedly into his father’s face. Then they were aware 
he was speaking. 

“It was very bad of God to throw my .father under 
the cart and make him be so ill. He is a bad God and 
I don’t like him!” 

“Reuben!” cried Leah in horror. 

“My child, my child!” whispered Eli. The young 
heresiarch! 

“Well I don’t love him!” said Reuben defiantly. 

This was no time nor place for severity. Besides, 
she felt it too acutely, too fearfully. Anything might 
happen, the room might fall in upon them in smoke and 
lightning. “How canst thou say such a thing, Reuben?” 
she wailed, her eyes brimmed with tears. 

The child perceived them. “When he makes my 
father well again,” he said hopefully, “Pll like him again!” 

Eli smiled faintly. “Do not perturb thyself, Leah. 
A child remains a child!” 


But when they were gone, when Mrs. Travers or 
the nurse sat dozing lightly in her chair, the wavering 
tourney was held again in the forlorn field, wavering, 
staggering, drawing together its ranks into new disposi- 
tions. It was not his body now that hung suspended, 
but his spirit, hung between apocalyptic and fulfilment, 
torn between Sinai and Calvary. The end and the be- 
ginning of his tribulation were close at hand. 

It was the sixth day since his coming into the house 
of the Christian woman. She herself had been called 


173 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


away for an hour or two and the nurse had descended 
into the lower part of the house to give certain directions. 
At that moment the blood seemed to lie dormant in the 
veins of the sick man as the thick cloud that had de- 
scended three days ago lay dormant upon Doomington. 
The functions of blowing wind and growing grass were 
remitted and all his functions of thought. When the 
faint light first blew, first trembled, in the shadowy space 
beyond the foot of his bed, so faint it was it seemed to 
him rather a modification of the darkness within his 
brain than a condition actually palpable to his eyes. It 
seemed merely the beginning of a thought, the precursor 
of renewed combat. Then he was aware that the light 
sprayed outwards away, disrelated from him. It was 
like the spraying of a fountain impelled obliquely by a 
wind. The light played upon the folds of the black 
velvet curtain drawn across the niche. For a time it 
seemed to course along the folds and meet its own scat- 
tered rays upon their round ridges, then break apart 
again. 

Then he was aware that the texture seemed to thin 
away within the inquisition of this light, to become 
permeable to it, translucent as gossamer. The arched 
space that had been for six days shut off by the opaque 
curtain was now illuminated and manifest. Never in 
his life before had anything been so clear to him as the 
ivory cross that hung there and the Christ nailed upon 
the cross. Not the Dnieper shining broadly the length 
of the day when all the townsfolk of Kravno stood upon 
its bank to cast their sins into the silver water; not 
his mother gazing with joy and awe upon him on the 
day of his bar-mitzvah when the sixty-year-old wise- 
acres engaged him in argument and they faltered and 


174 


ve 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


fell before him; not Leah in her kitchen in Jilk Street 
shaking the black pots or when he entered lifting her head 
with the glad cry of a creature in the spring-time meadows. 
None of these things had he ever seen so clear, it seemed 
to him, so true, as the cross and Christ on the cross. 
Nor might any of them, the dearest of them, intolerably 
dear, lovely, lovely sombre maiden, nor might she ever 
again be visible with this truth, this clarity. There 
was no other truth than he, crucified and bleeding. The 
light was the light of apocalypse, which was not of the 
sun nor of any star, the light of Calvary, when the veil 
of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the 
bottom; and the earth did quake and rocks were rent. 

Bleeding, bleeding. Slowly the blood oozed from the 
pale flesh where the nails had pierced it, the manifest 
and mortal blood. So tiredly the head dropped upon its 
shoulders as if the crown of thorns were heavier than all 
the compact mountain-ranges and the oceans gathered to- 
gether. 

And then at length the eyelids fluttered and came 
back from over the eyes. And then the eyes turned and 
came to rest on the eyes of the sick carpenter, pale 
unto death with woe and bliss, in his bed in the dark city 
of Doomington. Jew unto Jew, Doomington and Calvary. 
In those eyes, the eyes of the Jew upon the cross, the 
elder brother by a year he might have seemed to the 
Jew bound in his bed—there at last was the exposition, 
the meaning, there was all lucidity. 

Now nothing was hidden from the student that had 
stood in his own light so long. Now he knew that Christ 
was the knowledge he had so long sought by such devious 
paths, fleeing further from it the nearer he had attained 
it; thrusting his blind path through the burrows of in- 


175 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


tellect, when Christ had been bound for a sign upon his 
hand, and was for frontlets between his eyes and upon 
his gates. 

So it seemed to that pale youth, for whom the blood 
shed at Kravno was annulled in the blood shed on Cal- 
vary, for whom was destined contumely and the four 
nails and the thrust of the lance, even as that other had 
known them, his brother born in Bethlehem. 

And verily the voice that spoke seemed such as he 
might have heard in his boyhood, speaking out of some 
dusky corner of the synagogue, such its quality and in- 
flection were. But there were as many tears in it, it 
seemed to him, as all doomed men had shed and as much 
joy as all hearts had shaken with, put together again 
out of the tomb’s cold dust and wild with the ecstasy 
of heaven. 

So Christ, he deemed, spoke to him, using words lately 
made familiar, saying—it was almost death to hear, so 
exquisite the voice was: “Even thou, my brother, even 
thou, know thou this: thou that art Mary’s son, even as 
I. For even as I have prayed for that other, so I have 
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou 
art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” 

Till the voice was dimmed like the sound of singing 
that goes a long way hence, and the eyes turned again, 
and the eyelids fluttered and came down, and the light 
became less about the cross till it was no more seen; 
and a thin veil like gossamer seemed to hang between, 
through which the light still came to and fro, but not for 
long. And now the gossamer thickened into substance 
like black velvet, and the folds fell heavily. 

“Even so, Lord,” he said. “It shall be even so.” 


176 


G8 eA OG) SOT EDS 


We was only one purpose in living now That 


Eli clearly recognized. It was precisely the pur- 

pose to which the apostles had devoted themselves 
after the second going of Christ. It seemed to lighten and 
resolve the complexity of his pain and weakness to dis- 
cover life determined in one moment into so perfect a_ 
simplicity. There was one duty he was elected to, no 
more, no less, and by so ineffable an election: the con- 
version of his brothers in Doomington. 

It would be to misunderstand completely the new 
ordering of his mind to imagine he was under any illusion 
regarding the difficulty of the task to which, he con- 
sidered, his elder brother and theirs, Christ born in 
Bethlehem, had specifically appointed him. He remem- 
bered with extreme clarity what anguish he had himself 
endured thrusting his naked body through the spiny 
thicket. He remembered how he had stumbled into 
obscure and matted pools and thought they must sub- 
merge him for ever. He knew how they would wag their 
heads as he passed among them, and spit upon him and 
smite him upon the head. Even as he himself would have 
done, was it days ago or years ago, should some one 
have come his way crying: I have come, O my brethren, 
from our brother Christ. Slay me, as he was slain, but 
believe on him. How cried Ezekiel, O my brethren? 


177 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 
Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways; for why will ye 
die, O house of Israel? . 

And his wife? And his son? He closed his eyes an 
prayed, requesting strength to help him where it was most 
needed, where he was himself weakest. Perhaps even, 
so much grace had been vouchsafed him, it might be 
granted there. Could so much bliss be hoped for? Of 
all women in Jewry, who was made out of iron more 
rigid, soft though she was as a dove, though honey and 
milk were under her tongue and the smell of her gar- 
ments was like the smell of Lebanon? 

He fell musing upon her, how lovely she was. He 
had no other words for her than the words of the king 
that sang. Her teeth were like a flock of sheep that 
were even shorn, her lips like a thread of scarlet. Fair 
as the moon was she, clear as the sun, terrible as an 
army with banners. 

That she might go forth with him, singing the Christ! 

Vain, vain hope. Should the rivers return upon their 
sources? Should dumb stones speak? 

There was none other authority now than Christ, how- 
soever dear they might be who would dispute it. Though 
his own heart might be broken and hers also, Christ’s 
on the cross should not be broken again, yea, though a 
man’s foes be those of his own household. 

How must she know then, and when? It was the 
problem that most held his mind during the period of 
his convalescence. Mrs. Travers did not remit her kind- 
ness. He had already gathered from various slight in- 
timations, reinforced by a power of intuition he had not 
seemed to possess before, what her main interest was, 
identically the conversion of the Jews in Doomington. 
He perceived that she attempted to keep it from him 

178 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


because any suspicion of attempting to proselytize an 
impotent guest did violence to her sense of hospitality. 
He had endeavoured for his own part to initiate the sub- 
ject with her, but it was far more difficult than he had 
thought, and she had seemed to recognize the difficulty. 
Upon the day when through the interposed curtain Christ 
had become palpable to him—he could sooner have 
doubted that Christ had looked towards him and spoken 
to him than that his own heart beat—upon that day 
certain words had fallen from his lips and ebbed into 
incoherence. She had gathered their meaning. Later he 
had endeavoured to tell her more, as he could certainly 


not have done had she herself asked it from him. Then ~ 


finally she suggested, with diffidence, that so soon as he 
felt strong enough Father Hastings of All Saints might 
pay him a visit. Eli might receive counsel and consola- 
tion and Father Hastings would be in the last degree 
interested and delighted. 

She perceived at once the mistake she had made. He 
looked at her so wildly, shuddered with such violence, 
that she feared she had seriously compromised his re- 
covery. Any such suggestion did not once more pass her 
lips. Most scrupulously the black curtain was kept 
drawn across the niche, as much for Eli’s sake still, as 
for his wife’s, who came over to see him as often as the 
doctor thought desirable. Mrs. Travers was never clearly 
to realize that the young Jew had accepted no system of 
doctrine, was no Christian in any sense she and her 
friends and counsellors could consider valid. He had ac- 
cepted solely a person; but all his body and soul were 
flooded with him. 

For his part Eli realized he dared not prejudice what 
chances of success he had by any sort of premature action. 


179 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


He knew that should he, for days and weeks yet, breathe 
the slightest whisper to Leah of the news that must so 
hideously devastate her, he himself must succumb to the 
shock he would inflict upon her. 

He must wait. He must wait. The blood must come 
back into his cheeks, the bruised flesh must heal and 
the torn membranes, the crushed bones must be set 
firmly again, before he might outrage far more dis- 
astrously than ever his own flesh and bones had been, the 
soul of the creature he loved best in all the world. Best 
in all the world saving one alone, whom they had crowned 
with thorns and given him a reed for a sceptre to hold 
in his right hand and had mocked him, saying, Hail, King 
of the Jews! 

He left Oakdene on the first day the doctor declared it 
might be done without danger. 

“I shall not thank you,” he said, kissing the hand of 
Mrs. Travers with a courtliness which seemed princely, 
curiously remote from the ghetto which had nurtured him 
and was taking him again. He was to find himself re- 
moter still from the ghetto in the ghetto’s vortex than 
if the capricious seas had tossed him upon the last island 
of Polynesia. “I cannot thank you. The grace of Christ 
will be on you.” 

The words plucked at her heart-strings uneasily, with 
a noise of foreboding. They seemed like the first notes 
struck out on an instrument before the chords of calam- 
ity peal and shudder upon the air till the music dies away 
at length in a silencing of the world. 

“Write to me,” she cried out to him with attempted 
cheerfulness, “Dll expect to see you sometimes. Any 
time you care to let me see you at your own home and 

180 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


your wife. ... Don’t forget those sweets for Reuben. 
Tell him more will follow!” 

The wheels of the cab she had ordered for him died 
away. She had asked him should no messenger be sent 
to bring his wife to see him home safely. Now she 
understood why he had requested that his wife should 
not be disturbed. 

She rose to the room he had just left and at length 
drew the curtain aside from the image of Christ. There 
she kneeled for she knew not how long. There also she 
asked forgiveness. For it had seemed to her at that 
moment of foreboding that all her labour and the labour 
of her friends was a wickedness; it had seemed that it — 
might have been happier for the young Jew had he never 
been born and for that devoted doomed girl, his wife; 
happier had they never been born. 

She prayed for forgiveness, hardly daring to hope it 
had been granted her. 


181 


CEA PARE Rvs EeV EN 


sticks and a small fifth held five candles burning 

placidly. Leah had inherited from her mother at 
least the secret of the snowy washing of table-cloths. 
Not the yeast in the wake of a ship thrusting through 
wine-dark waters was whiter, nor a patch of snowdrops 
in the murky twilight of a yew. The fire flickered upon 
the hatless Moses contemplating the Tablets of the Law. 
It gave a glow to the mysterious glazed shoe from Brit- 
tany that hung on its pale pink ribbon. The “best bread” 
with grain sprinkled on its polished plaits heaved like a 
boulder under its white napkin. There was a bottle of 
sweet wine, even that, beside the brass tray where the 
two silver beakers shone, a tall beaker with a stem for 
Eli, a small squat one for Reuben. Bread and wine. . . 

... took bread and blessed, and brake it, and gave 
to them, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. 

And he took the cup: and when he had given thanks he 
gave it to them and they all drank of it. 

And he said unto them, This is my blood... . 

She stood with a veil upon her head, circling her hands 
three times forward and backward across the candle- 
flames before her face. Then she covered her face with 
her hands and uttered a prayer of the Jewish woman for 
the eve of the Sabbath. 


I T was the eve of the Sabbath. Four tall brass candle- 


182 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


A phantom in his own household, a death’s head at 
the table. How could he, weak though he be unto death, 
how could he permit this treachery, to Christ, to her? 

This night it must be, this night. Woe beyond all 
utterance. Her blood also I must drink, O Christ Lord, 
and her body also break. 

One moment’s respite, one moment more. He was 
intoning the kiddush now, the prayer over the wine that 
precedes the Sabbath meal, as he had intoned it for nearly 
thirty years. How pale he was, poor lamb, how his 
voice wavered. It would be her duty to make him strong, 
stronger than he had ever been before and to put more 
colour in his cheeks than there had been. She would 
work herself to the bone (he would not know it) to buy 
him eggs and fresh meat. Broad beans, indeed, a fine 
tale for a working-man. And there was every chance, 
the wife of the president of the Ukrainer Chevrah syna- 
gogue had told her, that they might make him a formal 
offer before long. He would cease to be a working-man, 
a common carpenter. 

“For thou hast chosen,” he sang with so melancholy 
a singing as no man had made before even in the sad 
heart of Doomington, “thou hast chosen us and sacrificed 
us above all nations. . . .” 

How should they know, the blind ones, that sang so 
happily at this moment now with their wives beside them, 
resting from the week’s labour, and their little lost Jew- 
ish children gathered about the white table-cloths, how 
should they know what choosing was that and what 
sanctifying? Not long now, not long. This day or the 
next day must their brother go forth amongst them, at 
Christ’s own bidding, rendering the evangel. 

“. . . and in love and favour hast given us thy holy 

183 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


Sabbath as an inheritance. Blessed art thou, O Lord, 
who hallowed the Sabbath!” 

And one there was who must rise up, this moment 
or the next moment, and desecrate it with more than 
the abomination of desolation. No language was devised 
for it. Yea, it was a bitter path to tread, though 
journey’s end be an orchard of pomegranates, with 
pleasant fruits, a fountain of gardens, a well of living 
waters, and streams from Lebanon. 

Now Reuben also had recited the kiddush, solemnly, 
without much expression, for so the child was made. She 
clapped her hands together excitedly over the feast that 
was now to be set before them. 

“Not much of this thou must eat,” she said. “It is 
only to give a foretaste.” She produced a dish of salted 
herring and onion, chopped up very small. He smiled 
wanly. He could imagine the horror of Mrs. Travers 
at the spectacle of such a dish set before her invalid. 
Fried fish followed, crisp and golden brown. 

“The very best oil,” said Leah, “no better is in the 
shop!” 

A soup came next, the colour of yellow honey. The 
lockshen in it, the vermicelli, had clotted into lumps. 
Indeed not. That was no error in her cooking. She 
knew he preferred it so. Reuben removed a small lump 
in his spoon and went over to the soap-box hen-coop 
under the sink. 

“Eat, Miriam!” he commanded. Miriam the hen was 
a dowdy heap of feathery oblivion. 

“Be content!” his mother said. ‘When she awakes, she 
will eat. Let it be there!” The boy came back im- 
mediately to his seat under the hatless Moses. 

Baked potatoes now followed, and then the sacred, 

184 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


the obligatory, broad beans, cooked together with a hand- 
ful of pearl barley. She had long since mastered her 
distaste for pearl barley. Did not Eli like his beans 
flavoured with them? 

“Well?” asked Leah, “what thinkest thou?” 

He was silent. 

“But wait,’ she went on, “wait. Now it comes! 
Knowest thou what is coming now!” 

He was silent. 

“Thou thinkest a hen, yes? Say thou thinkest a hen?” 

How could he speak when his tongue seemed furry 
with such a lichen as grows on corrupted trees? Each 
mouthful he had eaten slid slowly into his stomach like . 
a nugget of lead. 

She flung open the oven door with a peremptory 
gesture like a benevolent wizard. A whiff of hot air 
surged into the hot room. But it was more than that. 
A smell of roasted flesh, rarer, more pungent than the 
odour of hen’s flesh roasted, accompanied it. 

“Behold!” she cried, “katchky!”’ 

Roast duck, nothing else, verily, roast duck. 

“Wait, there is a story to tell!” she busied herself 
with knife and fork. “Here, Eli, is the stuffed neck for 
thee. Reuben likes the leg, yes? Reuben shall have the 
leg. Thou hast lived a fine day, Reuben, to see roast 
katchky on thy father’s table! Not the last either, 
Reuben, do not disturb thyself! It is hard to separate 
this leg properly. I should have remembered to sharpen 
the knife on the slop-stone before the Sabbath. I said 
there was a story to tell. Knowest thou, Eli, that with 
the last shillings in the house—wait, there is a joyful end 
to this tale. Be not perturbed about the last shillings in 
the house, there are more. Well, it had not been a good 

185 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


week in the shop and the Union—what can you expect 
from the Union? And the kind lady that was tending on 
thee sent money, but she has done enough for this house, 
enough. What for a taste would the Sabbath dinner 
have if bought with gentile money—an unholiness! Thou 
wouldst like the little liver, no, Eli? I scraped the last 
shillings together to get a hen for thy home-coming. And 
then what happened? Such a year on all the enemies of 
Israel! It is as thy heart tells thee! Yes, the hen was 
not kosher. The liver was all yellow, with a needle in it. 
The Above One knows how a needle should get into a 
hen’s liver. I gave it to Maggie, the fire-goyah. What to 
do now? Shalt thou have no hen for thy home-coming? 
But not a penny in the cupboard, not a penny. It seems 
no help for it. At last she must go, Miriam the hen, not 
that there would be much fat on her. Eat, Eli, eat, why 
dost thou not eat? It breaks my heart. I cannot bring 
myself to say it. It gets worse with the child. He loves 
Miriam better than his own mother, eh, Reuben?” 

“I love father and you first. Then I love Miriam!” 

“God first thou shouldst say. Then thy father and 
mother. Then what about thy grandmother, Serra Golda, 
and thy grandfather, Izzel Chaim, no harm befall them 
and their children? ‘Then thou mayst love Miriam. Let 
it be, thou art a good child. It is he himself that says 
it, with a face pale like dough. ‘Mother, he says, 
‘Miriam is bound to be kosher. She has eaten only 
kosher food in this house. Shall I take her to the slaugh- 
terers?’ What thinkest thou of that for a good child? 

“What shall I say? No? Thou shalt have no hen 
for thy home-coming? Shall I say yes? Then Reuben 
bends down to Miriam and takes her to his breast and 

186 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


talks toher. Five minutes pass. Ten minutes pass. He 
talks to her in a low voice. She twists her head this 
way, that. She ruffles up her neck-feathers. Then at 
last Reuben says—it is like a voice from the grave— 
he says: ‘Miriam herself says yes. We are going now, 
mamma. Give me twopence for the slaughterer.’ 

“There are just three or four farthings in the house. 
With a heart like stone I take down the broken cup 
where I have put them away in the corner of the cup- 
board. Hetakes them. He goes towards the door. All 
of a sudden there is a loud knock. What is it? The 
postman. A letter from Russia. It is the Above One 
himself coming to our help. Mazel Tov! Another baby » 
for my mother, no harm befall them, a baby, a circum- 
cision. The business has been doing brightly also. 
Twenty roubles. Yes, twenty, not less than twenty. A 
katchky!” Breathlessly she rattled off the last links in 
this amazing chain of causation as if nothing must be 
allowed now to withhold her from her climax. 

“A katchky!” she repeated triumphantly. Then her 
eyes fell upon her husband’s plate. 

“Eli!” she cried, “thou art not eating? Something is 
wrong with thee then? A katchky!” she said once more, 
as if there were wizardry in the mere enunciation of the 
word. “Why eatest thou not?” 

Out of what far lands his voice came, dimmed by the 
interposition of mountains and the salt middle sea, and 
made small by the shouting of many men gathered about 
Golgotha, the place of a skull. 

“Who knows, Leah, my child, if I shall ever eat in 
thy house again!” 

“What is wrong, Eli, what is this thou sayest? Thou 

187 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


art not well yet! Behold like a table-cloth art thou pale! 
Has the pain come back again? Reuben will this moment 
go for Doctor Katz!” 

“I need no doctor, beloved. I am healed.” 

“Be thou not perturbed. Much remains of the twenty 
roubles, God be thanked. It is as if their heart told them 
when money would be most useful to us. Thou remem- 
berest the occasion before, how ill was Reuben. Reuben, 
get down thine overcoat!” 

“Stay, child, stay. Or go, go. But no need for the 
doctor. How shall I know which will be happiest for 
thee?” 

“Come then, eat, Eli my beloved. The pain has passed 
away yet, eh? Thou wicked one, playing with thy knife 
and fork whilst the pain was in thy bones and wouldst 
say nothing and let me tell thee tales!” 

“How shalt thou understand, how shall I tell thee?” 

She drew back suddenly. She stared at him, her heart 
contracting. 

“What, does the doctor say something terrible has 
happened in thy inside? That it is left with thee, that 
thou mayst not be cured of it? It is a lie, Eli, it is a lie! 
We will go to other doctors, better doctors! Believe them 
not, my child! For the present, till we call them, let me 
take thee to thy bed. It will be better——” 

“Leah, Leah, my heart splits. A blackness is de- 
scending upon me. Thou wilt not let me share thy bed 
ever again!” 

“Eli, Eli, thou art mad! Thou art in fever that thine 
eyes stare so and thy forehead sweats!” 

“Let me tell thee quickly or the blood will rise into 
my throat and choke me; or my throat will crack and 
I shall go from this day till the day I die a dumb man in 

188 





DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


the streets of Doomington, and I shall be unable to 
deliver the message that has been entrusted me, a dumb 
man, a tomb that riseth and walketh about by noonday.” 

“T listen. Say what thou hast to say to me! No, no, 
my beloved, say it not! It cannot be! God would not 
permit it! Hold thy tongue!” 

“Ah, thou knowest? Perhaps a whisper has come to 
thee also, faint and far in the watches of midnight? Dost 
thou guess?” 

“What is the light that shines so in thine eyes? I am 
afraid! Thou art mad! I am lost utterly!” 

“Hath he made my way a little easier? That I may 
go forth into the wilderness 6 7 
“What foolery is this?” the woman shrieked. “No 
more thou shalt eat my food? No more thou shalt share 
my bed? ‘Thou art weary of me, I that loved thee so, 
that tended thee so! What woman then has come whose 
food thou shalt eat, whose body pleases thee more? What 

fiend from Gehenna has arisen 

He wailed like a dying baby and covered his face with 
his hands. “How couldst thou say it? How couldst 
thou say it?” There were no other words for him, it 
seemed, from now till the ending of days. “How couldst 
thou say it? How couldst thou say it?” 

“Fili, I have hurt thee unto death. I knew not what 
I was saying. Help me, God, the world falls in upon 
me and upon my man and upon my child! Why then, 
Eli, hast thou said these things? Have we not loved 
each other long? Hath God not blessed us? What have 
I done wrong that I may not do it again? It is some 
joke of thy sickness, Eli, that thou canst bring thyself to 
utter words like those. It is not thy own lips that say 
it. It is the evil spirit. Thou hast already forgotten 

189 








DAY OF ATONEMENT 


how he twisted thy lips to make them say what terrible 
things. Say it is so, Eli, my beloved!’ 

His words were cold and even, like ice that has con- 
gealed a stream that ran. “It was no evil spirit said these 
things, it was none other than I, I that love thee more 
by a hundred times than my mother and my father and 
all my kind, I that love thee a hundred hundred ‘times 
more than I love myself, that love thee as no man has 
loved woman before in the story of our race.” 

“What wouldst thou then of me,” she whispered, “if 
I have pleased thee so, O thou my prince?” 

“There is a condition upon which my Lord will permit 
me to eat the bread thou makest and to be thine own 
utterly as it hath been always. Shouldst thou grant it, 
every thorn will burn with a rose. What singing will 
rise in the courts of heaven when you and I enter there 
each with a hand of our child in his own hand. God the 
Father and God His son ‘i 

“What sayest thou? The sea is over my head. I 
drown. Make plain thy riddles.” 

“Leah, Leah, this night must we fare forth together, 
you and I and the little one. Or I must fare forth 
alone into the waste place, and my brothers will stone 
me with stones and my sisters will spit upon me as I 
pass by.” 

“Speak, speak!” 

“For I go forth out of Israel to-day. I go to the 
right hand of one whose name is corrupted to thee, of 
one whose name thou hearest only across the roaring 
of the rivers of blood. Prepare thyself, Leah, daughter 
of Christ’s race a 

“That word, only the carrion-fowl shriek it!” 

“Even so! Prepare thyself, my beloved, to whom I 

190 








DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


must henceforth be abominable and my name an evil 
odour. Hold thyself upright for the blow I must smite 
thee with. To thy mother’s side, Reuben, place thy two 
hands about her! Be brave!” 

“My heart does not beat!” 

“That my own had ceased long ago!” 

“Say no word!” 

“The word must be said! I must go forth from my 
people, from my child, from thee. I go forth to Christ 
Jesus, a young student of the Torah even as myself, that 
was crucified even as I am crucified and rose from the 
dead as I shall rise. I will return with Christ ere I be 
dead, to my people, even to the threshold of this house, to | 
my child, to thee, beseeching you also to love Christ 
who was bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, and died 
for us!” 

She was as one dead. There was no hue of mortal 
blood in her cheeks or lips. Even her brown eyes that 
had been the colour of beeches with autumn and the 
sun upon them, were sere as pines fallen a hundred 
years ago from their roots. 

The coke fire that had been banked high before the 
Sabbath and had glowed so warmly, had eaten its heart 
out. The crust fell in on the expiring embers. Beyond 
that there was silence. Eli shivered as though a wind 
blew in from icy wildernesses. Reuben’s large blank, in- 
scrutable eyes were fixed on his father’s, unmoving. Leah 
was as one dead. 

Then a low sound came from her, muted by ruin. Her 
lips did not seem to move. 

“That this profanation should fall upon my house!” 

Then there was silence again, cold as a shroud, heavy 
as the wet earth heaped on a coffin newly consigned there. 


Igl 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


Then she spoke once more, but her eyes did not turn 
towards him. They were disks of clay. 

“This is no lie? Thou dost not play with me?” 

“This only is truth. There is none other.” 

Then he saw her head nodding towards her breast 
and go wagging queerly to one side. He saw her lower 
jaw drop. He sprang from his torpor and made towards 
her round the side of the table to prevent her falling 
forward upon the table among the candlesticks. 

His coming was like a flame that scorched her, like a 
wave shouting. All her faculties came together again. 
She bared her teeth. 

“Do not touch me, meshummed!” she shrieked. 
“Apostate, lay no finger upon me, a daughter of Israel!” 

He stood before her, stretching out his hands. She 
drew back cowering into the arms of her child. She 
raised her eyes slowly to his, full of a desperate inquiry, 
a wild unbelief. This was he? This was he. Then his 
features faded before her sight. When they were once 
more composed, they bore the semblance of another than 
himself. Once before she had seen those lips writhe 
scarlet on a snow-white face, when they had shrilled 
louder than the whistle of hurtling beams, louder than 
children splitted upon poles, beyond land and sea in 
Kravno: 

“Thou, thou, hast done it? Thou hast brought it upon 
us, outcast from Israel!” 

Now no sound issued from those lips. Now merely 
they gaped and twisted, scarlet upon death-white. 

And then consciousness fled from her and she was 4 
small hulk of flesh sliding to the floor from her bright 
candlesticks and glowing beakers, from all her pageantry 
of Sabbath, so loved and so desecrated.. 

192 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


Then the child found tongue! “Father!” he wailed 
like a homeless ghost. Eli was tottering over to the sink 
to fill a tumbler of water. “Father, why did you do it?” 

“My son, O my son, even as Christ bade!” 

Then the child stamped his feet. Great tears coursed 
down his cheeks. Then he shook his small clenched 
fists. “I hate Christ, I hate him! I hate him like I hate 
God!” 


193 


CIA JE Re EG Hah 


HERE was a pounding on the front door beyond 
the lobby. ‘“Who’s that?” asked Eli huskily. 


“Maggie!” 

He had forgotten. It was Maggie, the fire-goyah, she 
who attended upon the Sabbath fires of the Jews in the 
neighbourhood of Jilk Street, and had come now to turn 
out the gas. 

“I will hold up her head. Go thou and let her in. 
She is a mother of many children and may help us!” 

Reuben sped like a shadow to the door. “My mother’s 
ill, Maggie,” he moaned. “She’s fainted!” 

Maggie stormed in with all her tattered wealth of 
shawl. 

“What’s happened?” she cried. ‘“What’s happened to 
the poor darlint?” She bustled over to the tap and 
washed the coal-dust from her hands; then bent down 
and deftly chafed Leah’s brows. “Some wather!” she 
commanded. “And give me a dish-cloth and some 
vinegar! Open them doors, Reuben!” 

Her ministrations were of no avail. 

“?Tis starvin’ herself she’s been, Mister Eli. Starvin’ 
herself, the blessed child, since ye’ve been away!” 

Eli’s eyes burned darkly from his sallow face. He 
made useless gestures with his hands. 

“It is not only that, Maggie!” he said. “It is I! I 
must be blamed for this!” 


194 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


99 





“Surely ye’re not manin’ she began, her mother- 
craft starting in her bosom like an awakening beast. 
“Ye’re not manin’ .’ Then she stopped. 

“It is not that!” said Eli. “I have broken her heart!” 

“What nonsense will ye be talkin’ now? Sure ye’re 
just drunk this night, the whole lot of you!’ Anxiously, 
unweariedly, her rubbings and sprayings persisted. 
Whiter and chaster than lilies Leah’s breast was exposed 
to the guttering gas, her breast and the amulet that lay 
upon it, to the eyes of her lover who must never know 
those pale fields again. “Drunk this night,” repeated 
Maggie, “with the grand wine sittin’ on the table!” 

piNOlSarcricd,| ‘Reuben, pnolItsyiwrong! wilt \isnit,, 
true!” 

“Sure and I was only jokin’. Don’t be gettin’ cross, 
Reuben, with your old Maggie!” 

The eyes fluttered. “Glory be to God! She’s comin’ 
round! What is it you’re sayin’, lovey? Husht, you, ye 
mustn’t be talkin’ now!” 

Leah’s face was still bloodless as marble, yet the lips 
would not be gainsaid. 

“Is the apostate still in my house?” 

Swiftly, with a sudden animosity, Maggie’s eyes looked 
up towards Eli from their seamed pouches. 

“Is it you she’s manin’?” she whispered. “What is it 
you've been doin’?” 

“Is the apostate still in my house?” 

“Husht, Mrs. Leah, you must not be takin’ on so!” 

“He has slain me!” 

“What day’s work has been done this day?” 

“Bid him begone from my house!” 

“Let you be comin’ round properly, first, then we'll see 


how the matter is!” 





195 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


“Bid him begone from this house! Let him not one 
moment more defile it!” 

Then Maggie blazed up suddenly. “What are you 
standin’ there for, you dirty man? Is it another woman 
you’ve been carryin’ on with, some dirty shikshah out 
of the streets?” 

“It is no gentile woman I have taken to myself. It 
is Christ your Lord. I have taken Christ. I go this 
moment. Breathe into her ear when I have gone that 
no Jew ever loved woman more.” 

Such fury as glared from Maggie’s eyes, Maggie, the 
Catholic fire-goyah, who went to Mass so many mornings 
in the week as her rheumatics did not incapacitate her; 
such twitching at her fingers as if she would tear the 
flesh from his cheek-bones. 

“From you at least,” he said, “a Christian woman, I 
shall have charity!” 

Then the maledictions ripped from her throat. 

“Let the Divil be carryin’ ye off to Hell this night 
and be brastin’ ye with hot oils. I that thought ye a 
dacent God-fearin’ Jew, and you to be bought up by 
them black Protestants—or the Salvation Army, is it? 
—to be gettin’ a great week’s wages for the unholy work 
you'll be doin’ for them, preachin’ at the street-corners 
with bands and going off with the hussies and feastin’ 
and drinkin’ and you all makin’ beasts of yourselves. 
And to be lavin’ behind ye this blessed child to be cryin’ 
her heart out for the shame ye’ll be bringin’ on her, 
night and day and for ever from now on. Isn’t your 
little child, ayther, enough to hold ye back, that should 
be the great credit to you the way he goes to the syna- 
gogue like a Catholic to Mass. Shame upon ye! It’s 
the Divil’s work ye’re doing this night, with all this 

196 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


grand talk about our blessed Lord, when the best way ye 
can serve Him is to remain the Jew ye were born. Don’t 
ye know that, bad cess to ye? And we'll be seein’ ye 
creepin’ back again in two months or three, because 
your stomach won’t hold pork, not being lined that 
Wave 

“What’s that ye’re sayin’, honey? Yes, it’s him at the 
door now. Don’t be takin’ on! He’ll be comin’ home to 
ye before this moon is round and back again! Put your 
hands about my neck, so, while I lift ye on the chair! It’s 
the drop of wine you'll be takin’ now to pull yourself 
together. Won’t ye, now: Yes, that’s himself openin’ 
the door! : 

“Reuben, be you gettin’ up this instant from lyin’ 
on the hard floor with the two doors open and the cold 
winds blowin’ in on ye! 

“That’s the door closed in on him. He’s away now. 
You bide your time, my dear, it won’t be long ye’re kept 
waitin’! 

“Och Jasus, Mrs. Leah, cry now! Cry and ye’ll feel 
better for it the next minute. 

“Is it stone ye’re turned into, woman, the cold, cold 
stone!” 


197 


CHAP THERININ E 
al HE only academic distinction Reuben had ever 


earned or was-ever destined to earn was a small 

album filled with “Ogdens,” a specific cigarette- 
card which had given its name to the whole genus. When 
Standard One B was promoted ex bloc to Standard Two A 
it was announced by Miss Tompkins, the new teacher, 
that the album was to be awarded to the “best” boy or 
girl after a fortnight’s experimental observation. To be 
“best” implied sitting in a state of complete petrifaction 
with the arms so folded that each hand clasped an opposed 
elbow. It was also expected that the back of the skull 
should rest as nearly as possible upon the nape of the 
neck. Light as the labour might seem for the gaining 
of such a prize, the blood that surged in Green Bower 
and Jilk Street did not congeal easily, and despite con- 
scientious efforts, lasting sometimes nearly a quarter of 
an hour, Barney Cohen and Millie Ginsberg would soon 
be forced to confess such sculptural rigidity unnatural to 
them. Jessie Levi and Nochum Goldstone would de- 
cline almost as swiftly from this dizzy perpendicular of 
virtue, whether Nochum felt himself compelled to carry 
on a gentle flirtation with Jessie or Jessie to tweak 
Nochum’s ears to see what they felt like. 

It was Reuben alone who managed to remain perpet- 
ually taut and silent. Miss Tompkins did not know it 
was his natural deportment; that nothing happened about 

198 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


him anywhere to startle him out of this apathy so sadly 
misconstrued by her as rapt attentiveness. It was her 
habit to signify her decision that this boy or girl was be- 
ing “best” by chalking his initials in the corner of her 
blackboard. It was with great infrequency that Barney 
Cohen, Millie Ginsberg, Jessie Levi or Nochum Gold- 
stone found their initials so blazoned. Whenever it hap- 
pened all the other forty-eight heads of Standard Two A 
swivelled as one head to gaze upon the recipient of the 
honour, noble in itself and nobler in its potentiality. 
Upon none more frequently than upon Reuben was this 
honour conferred. He did not desire it. The raking of 
his isolation by forty pairs of eyes made him sick and | 
furious. But the lean face, the blank eyes, expressed 
neither resentment nor gratification. The cigarette-card- 
album was in due course placed into his hands. 

He maintained this reputation for virtue in the dis- 
tracted bosom of Miss Tompkins and her successors by 
the restraint with which he forbore from asking ques- 
tions. It was one aspect, rather more embarrassing than 
the others, of youthful Jewish vitality in Doomington, 
that the question any girl or boy might suddenly put to 
you with a peremptory upstretching of the right hand left 
no recess of philosophic or sexual decency unprobed. 
Reuben asked no questions anywhere, for nothing in- 
terested him. 

Yet upon the day which followed the events lately 
described it was not without some faint quickening of 
curiosity that he perceived as he came home from the 
evening Hebrew School how a bucket of cold water stood 
outside the doorstep and a jar beside it. He had a dim 
feeling that he had known the same phenomenon as- 
sociated with other doorsteps. But he had been too in- 


199 


DAN OF ATONEMENT 


curious to discover and remember what it portended. 
He perceived how the neighbours, Mrs. Novik and her 
daughter, who lived in Number Fourteen, the last house 
in the street, stooped as they passed by and filled the jar 
from the bucket and sluiced their hands. He was not 
unaware that a group of neighbours were gathered on 
the opposite side of the street, nudging each other and 
discussing him, it seemed. The children winked and 
smiled. Some stuck their tongues out at him. He saw 
his mother seated in the kitchen upon a low stool and was 
informed that he too must sit on a low stool beside her. 
Then gradually the room filled with old Jews from the 
Ukrainer Chevrah until there were ten of them, and 
mysteriously, unnecessarily, they proceeded to recite the 
evening service. It would have been so much easier and 
more natural to do it in the synagogue; why had they 
come to Jilk Street? Then an old man said: “Is the 
boy’s waistcoat torn?” And his mother whispered in a 
voice that could hardly be heard at all: “It is not yet 
done, Reb Pinchas. Woe is me, I have forgotten.” And 
he said, “Do not perturb thyself, little daughter, it will 
be done now.” 

So they took a knife and made a slit into the top of 
the left side of his waistcoat, and women appeared bring- 
ing with them the two circular foods of mourning, eggs 
and the small glazed rings of bread called bagles, with 
ashes sprinkled upon them. And his mother was so pale 
that it seemed she might die. And suddenly the boy 
shrieked, his voice hoarse with fright: 

‘“What’s all this? .My poor, poor mother! What are 
they doing all this for?” 

And Reb Pinchas said mildly, softly: “Sha, sha, my 
child! Thou must be a good boy to thy mother and a 

200 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


good Jew and her machuss as she grows older, her pride 
and consolation; and thou must be her kaddish when 
she is dead to give her soul peace. For she has only thee 
now. We have come to sit mourning. Thy father is 
dead!” | 

“Dead?” he cried. “Dead? It’s a lie! You're all 
telling lies! I met him in the fields when I came home 
from chayder just now and he took and kissed me. Don’t 
believe them, mother! I tell you he isn’t dead at all! 
He isn’t dead at all!” 

But they would not have it so. Dead he is for ever, 
they said, as a dog that died in the wilderness. No one 
would bury his bones. 


201 


CHAPTER TEN 
I 


lie Union found itself unable to cope with the 
position that faced it upon Eli’s return to the 
Victoria Cabinet Works. Its particular problem 
was the creation or resolution of difficulties as arising be- 
tween masters and men. Theology certainly it had 
deemed to be outside its province. When all the Jews in 
the Works threatened to resign from the Union if it did 
not compel the meshummed, as they called him, to clear 
out of the place, for a day or two the Union attempted 
to overlook the threat. Trade was slack. That was, in- 
deed, the very reason why the matter was brought be- 
fore the Union rather than the boss. In those days the 
boss could get workmen rather more easily than the 
Union unionists. The matter would blow over. But 
when it was brought to their notice that the hostility of 
the Christians at the Works was just as vigorous, they 
felt that something would have to be done, something in 
the nature of a little honied insinuation. 

Eli himself solved the problem for them. He managed 
to find a place in a Cabinet Works a mile or two away 
from Begley Hill, on the outer edge of Longton, where 
he was the only Jew employed, and his presence created, 
for the present at least, no theological complications. 
He also found a ground-floor room in Pratt Street not 
far from the Works. It contained a bed, a table, and a 

202 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


chair. There was always enough room for his library, 
for it had dwindled down to a single volume, a copy of 
the Scriptures containing the Old and New Testaments. 

Often now he hungered and thirsted, for he earned little 
in his weakness, and the few shillings he formerly had had 
the power to earn in the past only the unremitting care 
of his wife had given him strength for. But at the mo- 
ments when hunger and thirst became acute and he would 
think of bestirring himself to drain yesterday’s milk or 
the day’s before yesterday (for from day to day he forgot 
its existence) the burning bliss returned to him. It was a 
bliss not of Christ discovered, Christ a stranger, but Christ 
long hidden from him by dense intervening vapours, now 
newly seen, for the first time seen truly. Now newly seen, 
for the conviction possessed him that he had always 
known Christ and fled him as at this moment, and for 
two thousand years his race had known Christ and fled 
him. 

But there were moments of no more bliss. They were 
the moments when the Jew in his marrow—not the Jew in 
his soul, for that Christ had conquered—the Jew inter- 
fused through each drop of blood, the Jew that quivered 
along the white-hot length of each nerve, arose and cried. 
It was the Jew the tangled histories had made, the divine 
loyalties, the incomparable sorrows. It was the Jew of 
the exile in Babylon, the burnings in Spain, the massacres 
in Russia. It was the Jew of a hundred dear nothings, as 
potent as any most grandiose act in the colossal drama— 
the pudding made out of raisins and stewed carrots, the 
spinning top to play with on the Feast of the Maccabees, 
the tumult of the rattles when Haman’s name was men- 
tioned during the reading of Esther’s tale in the syna- 
gogue, the stuffed neck of duck, the jam made out of 

203 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


beetroot and hazel-nuts, the high sport on the Passover 
feasts when the lord of the house hid away the fragment 
of unleavened bread and the sly children strove to steal it 
from him—all these, all these. ‘The Jew in him arose and 
cried, now like a lion, the lion of the tribe of Judah. All 
his body shook with dismay of its roarings. Now it was a 
child that wailed, having no word to tell what sadness had 
befallen it. It looked upon him with eyes of such re- 
proach that he must lower his own. They were his wife’s 
eyes, his son’s, his father’s, his mother’s, the eyes of all his 
friends, his fathers’ fathers, rank beyond rank into the 
backward abysm. 

So he threw himself down before Christ and lifted his 
hands. So the lion was stilled in him and the child that 
wailed, for there was one voice only, almost death to hear, 
SO exquisite the voice was: “For even as I have prayed 
for that other, so I have prayed for thee, that thy faith 
fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy 
brethren.” 

He knew the scorns that lay before him. He waited 
only from one day to the next till he felt he had regained 
sufficient strength not to be overwhelmed wholly by the 
revilers upon their first onslaught. 

And he came down upon Begley Hill, where the Jews 
are gathered together in Doomington, preaching his 
Christ. 


Have you by some mishap stood alone upon a rock en- 
compassed by the rising sea and known that each wave 
that snatched at you was instinct with particular hatred 
and you it was were so hated? Have you stood at the 
heart of a burning house and known that each flame lusted 
for you? So was it to be for this poor youth in Dooming- 

204 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


ton. But not at first. There was little power in him at 
the beginning where he stationed himself at street-corners 
and held forth in frail accents on the joy he brought them. 
Some thought him mad and that he would recover from 
the sickness, for a cart had passed over him and subtler 
injuries than crushed ribs might follow such an accident. 
These were the more charitable. They had no more tol- 
erance for him than the others, or perhaps, if they had one 
trifle more, they displayed it by hurrying away when they 
saw him discoursing at the street-corners. But the others 
halted with set jaws and smouldering eyes. Had this man 
been any gross lout who had left the arms of his gentile 
light o’ love to enter the less exhausting service of some 
society for Jewish conversion, they could not have par-— 
doned him—who could pardon such perfidy?—but they 
might have understood him a little more. This man, they 
said, had once attempted to teach the faith to their own 
children; they had talked of appointing him rabbi at one 
of the synagogues. There were folk who said that no 
man in all Doomington was his equal in knowledge of the 
Torah. They said that no woman in the whole town had 
been, or was now, a holier daughter of Israel than his wife, 
but that this shame had brought such a grief upon her that 
she was not heard to speak. Who should better know the 
falsity and iniquity of his behaviour than this man, the 
husband of such a wife, the master of so much knowledge? 
Granted that the devil had so seized the man as to con- 
vince him that the lie he said was truth, would it not have 
been seemlier that he hid himself in a cellar or in the lair 
of foxes in some waste place than thus announce it abroad 
where the children passed between chayder and school, 
school and chayder, and the abominable seed might take 
root in their hearts? 
206 


DAYNO TALON EI MiN a 


They needed to have no fear for the children, least of all 
for them. The youngest of them and those that, being 
cruel by nature, tore the wings from flies or swung cats 
about by their tails, found in Eli more delicate sport to 
hand. The eldest, those that had begun to gamble on the 
number of goals to be scored in football matches and on 
horse-racing, exercised a considerable ingenuity in making 
Eli the central objects of their bets and sweep-stakes. 
Who could most accurately guess how many minutes he 
would be allowed to stand upon his box that night at the 
corner of Crupp Street before the box would be smashed 
beneath him? Who would be the first to hit him on the 
mouth that night with a cold boiled potato? 

The “lads” of Green Bower and Ealing Street—they 
were a fearsome corporation whom not even policemen 
encountered ‘with enthusiasm—as they stood muttering 
together in the dark entry to Cravitz’s Hardware Store, 
‘did not perceive that the small lad who had joined them to 
shelter from the black sleet was Reuben, the son of Eli the 
apostate, who had been, as it happened, the subject of 
their conversation for the last ten minutes. Had they per- 
ceived that it was Reuben, they would doubtless have dis- 
continued the conversation; but there was nothing in his 
figure or the dim blur of his face to render him specially 
recognizable in that gloom. They would have transferred 
their attentions from father to son, for though their con- 
sciences might inform them that the son had not prosely- 
tized the father, it was part of their ancestral wisdom and 
experience that the sins of the fathers were visited upon 
the children. They would have found that dark entry to 
Cravitz’s Hardware Store an admirable theatre for a little 
preliminary persecution, a pulling outward of the ears, a 

206 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


pressing inward of the nose—to get their Hands in, as it 
were. 

It took Reuben no long time to discover who was the 
theme of the conversation, nor to become aware that his 
father was to speak in the croft adjacent to the Ealing 
Street School on the morrow evening. Nor did he remain 
unaware for long that the “lads” were meditating a vio- 
lence more organized and vehement than had confronted 
his father before. 

As Reuben leaned back against the wall, a chill lay upon 
his forehead and in the palms of his hands. He had not 
been so numb with misery even when his mother had 
fallen in a swoon upon the kitchen floor, even when they. 
had tried to tell him that his father was dead. If he were 
dead why did they not leave him so? Why stand whis- 
pering in dark corners, planning outrage upon his dead 
body? What was this God in whose name they did it? 
So the child asked himself as they stood chuckling there 
in that obscene dampness. 

“Like in a book, Jakey, altogether like 

“I’m goin’ to pinch a few ’errings. My mother’s got a 
little barrel of ’errings in the scullery. ’E’s sure to like 
’errings.” 

“And stuff ’is gob with potato-peelin’s 

“But first let Chazkal shout: One, Two, Three, Go! 
See, Jakey?” 

“Altogether like. Like ina book. The lads are coming 
in from Green Bower as well, and Crupp Street, but Chaz- 
kal’s captain.” 

“Shall I lend Chazkal my captain’s whistle?” 

“The big lads are coming as well. Blue Barney and 
Ike Cohen 4 


93 





bP) 








207 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 
What was this God in whose name they did it? What 


was this Christ in whose name he suffered it? Could you 
see Christ or God? Could you touch them with your fin- 
gers? Were they lovely? Wicked they were, wicked, 
wicked! 

He had slid out into the pelting night. He heard them 
cackle as he crept away. They cackled loud and long 
about him as he took to his heels and ran out into the wind 
and rain, out beyond the cap-works and the waterproof 
works and the synagogue, out beyond Begley Hill towards 
the greasy slopes of Longton. 

Here it was. This was Pratt Street. His father had 
whispered the name to him that evening, Pratt Street be- 
yond the Blenheim Road, Number Six, the window to the 
right of the door. 

“Shouldst thou desire me, Reuben my child 

There was a light burning in the room to the right of the 
door. The child tapped on the window-pane. A shadow 
lengthened on the wall and thrust out hugely upon the 
ceiling. He heard the sound of footsteps approaching and 
the door drawn back. 

“Who is it? It is not thou? It is not Reuben? My 
son, my son, enter! Come in from the rain!” 

“No, father! I haven’t time to come in! I must go 
away quickly!” 

“Thou also, Reuben? Will not my child know me?” 

“Is it right I should go into your house, father, when 
I’m with mamma? HowcanI goin? Can I?” 

“Thou hast said it, my son. With her or with me. 
Thou wouldst tell me something? Say it speedily. I can- 
not keep thee in this black night!” 

“Father, is it true you are going to talk in the fields near 
Ealing Street School to-morrow?” 

208 


39 





DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


“Even so.” 

“You must not go to-morrow. You must go somewhere 
else.” 

“Why shall I not go?” 

“Please, please!” 

“Why shall I not go?” 

“The lads are coming from all round. They’re going to 


mob you. You must, you must, stay away!” 


“It is not in my power to stay away!” 

“All the big boys. They’ll throw things at you, knock 
you down and hit you with sticks.” 

“Hast thou not read, Reuben, how David sang: ‘He 
delivereth me from mine enemies: yea, thou liftest me up 
above those that rise up against me: thou hast delivered 
me from the violent man?’ 

“How shall I stay away? Shall I be afraid?” 

“You’re not a strong man like other fathers.” 

“T am stronger than my enemies.” 

“Daddy, daddy, please!” 

“This thing I may not do. Go, my child, home to thy 
mother. Why dost thou wear nothing about the neck?” 

“Good-night, father!” 

“Good-night, son!” 

Long he stood bare-headed upon the step with the rain 
beating down upon him, looking into the darkness where 
the noise of the boy’s running had ceased. Then he shook 
his head and walked slowly back into his room again, to 
the light of his one candle and his single book. 


II 


Still half an hour to go before evening chayder. So said 
the alarm-clock on the kitchen mantelpiece in Jilk Street. 
209 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


Two minutes before the half-hour he would jump up from 
the chair beside the fire-guard and run straight there, 
looking neither left nor right. Chayder would drag out 
its three hours’ length and he would run straight home 
again. He would say his head was hot and she would 
send him to bed at once. There he would fall asleep. He 
would be thinking of it no more—how the lads had gath- 
ered together and what they carried and what foul words 
they said. And how he lay under their feet and how they 
kicked him. . 

He shivered. He bent down towards her box and 
lifted Miriam the hen into his arms, trying to forget. He 
could not forget. The thought had stuck talons into him. 
His father lay under their feet. They kicked him. He 
went into the parlour-shop where his mother stood slicing 
the ingber for her diminished trade. 

“Mamma, can I buy anything in for you?” 

“What is there to buy, my son?” Why was her voice 
cold like a slab in the street? It had once been a thing 
that ran and shone, like water. 

He returned into the kitchen again. Twenty-three min- 
utes still to go. They slapped his face with salted her- 
rings and stuffed his mouth with potato-peelings. He lay 
under their feet. (The knuckles gripping the fire-guard 
were tight and pale.) They kicked him. 

There was a smell of blood, harsh, unmistakable, in the 
child’s nostrils. He saw it start slowly from the broken 
flesh above his father’s brows. . . . 

He had fled from the kitchen through the parlour, 
crashed the door to behind him. 

“What is with thee? Whither goest thou?” his mother 
cried. He did not regard her. He was upon the croft 
against the Ealing Street School. He saw them where 

210 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


they were gathered together, men and women that jeered, 
and the lads. He saw the filth hurtling through the air, 
where his father stood, beseeching, holding out his hands. 
He saw them clot together and lurch forward. Then he 
hurled himself, miserable frail child, upon them. 

So had this beleaguered man once, transported into just 
such an ecstasy and borrowing strength from it not his 
own, so had he hurled himself against odds—in Russia, in 
a creek by the Dnieper, where a huge peasant leered lust- 
fully down on a girl’s white body. So, too, the child’s 
blind fury prevailed and his enemy crumbled before him. 

“You cowards!” he shrieked, almost too shrilly to hear. - 
His small fists were in their eyes and mouths. His feet 
stormed amongst their legs and many carried away sharp 
bruises. “You cowards, you dirty cowards!” 

But the issues of that earlier Russian invasion and this 
in Doomington were not the same. A minute or two and 
the ranks of the lads were drawn together again, incredu- 
lous and ashamed that this pale booby had wrought such 
havoc in so short a time. 

“It’s his son!” they cried gleefully. “It’s the meshum- 
med’s son! Come along, lads! Get to it!” 

It was a richer festival than they had hoped for. 


2II 


CHA PPERV ET E VSN 


ing with the few people he had loved. Caught in 

the close meshes of his own brain, there had always 
been interposed between himself and others a labyrinth he 
must painfully unwind. If he found his way out at length 
there was none waiting to meet him. He had no sense 
of adaptation to differences. He could attempt to con- 
vince Sergei the moujik of the stupidity of the racial mur- 
der accusation with as learned a series of talmudic argu- 
ments as he would deploy in the synagogue before the 
greybeards. In his efforts to teach a small child the 
alphabet of the holy tongue he would drag him by the ears 
into a forest of Kabbala. 

That was at an end now. He had not drawn from his 
new experience a new armoury of intellectual arguments. 
If the lull in the tumult about him during his street-corner 
oratories were sufficiently prolonged, no man or woman 
could fail to realize that he drove straight to the heart 
something of terror and beauty. No man but felt his 
blood insidiously quickened. Whereas once the man that 
stood there, threatening, pleading, had not the faculty to 
convey a direct meaning even to one creature, now there 
was no member of the crowd who listened to him, or did 
not listen, who did not feel that to himself and himself 
alone the speaker conveyed particular, desperate messages. 
It was this fearful potency that infuriated them most of all. 

212 


| pe had never achieved human contacts before, sav- 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


More and more stern the opposition to him became, hard- 
ening from the mockery or contempt which had at first 
confronted him into grim hatred. Yet there were not 
lacking those who marvelled to see how the valour of this 
creature, single-handed and a weakling, burned more im- 
periously the more perilously his enemies beset him. 

Well they might marvel one particular day on that same 
croft by the Ealing Street School, when there had been a 
convocation of the loutish sort from every alley of Begley 
Hill and Longton. Many a ten times stronger man would 
have disappeared inconspicuously so soon as he saw that 
sO ominous a gathering awaited him. But Eli had passed 
beyond the stage when physical violence intimidated him. — 
The spectacle added fire to his eyes and a wild poignancy 
to his speech. There were many youths there that eve- 
ning who had not heard him before, and though the in- 
tention had been not to allow him to proceed for more 
than a sentence or two, his strange lucidity, that serenity 
culminant upon passion, held them back. They shuffled 
awkwardly. They remembered the purpose for which 
they had come, and booed. For it had been decided in 
their courts that the apostate was to be given little more 
tolerance. And as the fire waned in his eyes and his 
throat became hoarser, they booed more loudly, they 
closed in upon his box more and more threateningly. 

Then of a moment they were aware of a new ardour 
that sprang from him and sent them recoiling, as it might 
be a barrier of swords. His voice rose like a bird’s in 
passionate circles of expostulation. They did not know 
that one more young man had added himself to their num- 
ber, a young man, indeed, whom they knew hardly at all 
for he did not share their enthusiasms. He appeared and 
disappeared, no man knew why and whither. His name 

213 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


was Dovvid Pollock. Even as he spoke, before he had set 
eyes on him, Eli had become aware that a new element of 
disturbance, subtler, more incalculable, than the rest, was 
introduced into the atmosphere. Then he beheld the 
shaggy locks and the head and the huge shoulders. Then 
the eyes seized and held him. 

He had never known an expression of such pride and 
self-satisfaction. The eyes glittered with the glory of 
achievement. He seemed to sniff the air and inhale its 
odours joyfully. Having sown the seed so wisely, how 
good it was to stand breast-deep amongst the harvest. 
But there was something more in those eyes than pride 
and self-satisfaction. There was a mockery fiendish as a 
sky jagged with lightning. The mockery with which these 
others had met him seemed merely babyish and inept. 

Yet there was a firmament where the sun and the stars 
are composed in their courses and the lightnings do not 
flare. There was a truth established behind mockery 
where Christ hung on his cross and the lightnings did not 
flare and the mockers were gone away. So it was that 
they became aware of a new ardour like a barrier of 
swords, and his voice rising more intolerably wild and 
sweet than ever before, in passionate circles of expostula- 
tion. Never again was he so compelling nor were they so 
subdued. So high he rose into the empyrean singing the 
love of Christ that at length all other consciousness but 
Christ was forgotten. As of old he spoke a tongue that 
his hearer could not grasp; but it was the speech not of 
the mind’s excessive subtlety, but of the beatific vision. 
They stood there with jaws fallen and entranced faces. 
No voice was heard save his own, and that dimly. 

Then, his wings slowly fluttering, he came down out of 
his exaltation again, aware of himself in Doomington, 


214 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 
upon the croft by the Ealing Street School, and of the 


awakening faces atout him. He heard a rumour in their 
throats and the shouts thickening there again. He saw 
a movement amongst them more sinister than before. 
For a great fear had fallen upon them. Should they listen 
so seduced again, whither might they not be led? Lo, 
how perilous a silence had that been! Should they be 
silent thus once more, then all was vain. To no purpose 
had the Covenant been granted to Abraham and to the 
sons of Israel for ever. To no purpose were all the thirst 
and hunger and wandering and the shedding of blood. 
For their silence was betrayal; wheresoever in the walls of 
Judah the breach was made, not long would the stoutest 
bastion remain nor the midmost citadel. They pressed in 
upon him, their fingers twitching. 

And at that moment once more he set eyes upon Dovvid 
Pollock. The huge head lolled loosely and ludicrously 
upon the neck. The eyes were ashen as the moon’s 
craters. ‘They were like a battlefield at night, in winter, 
where both armies have died in the knowledge that the 
battle was useless. 

A shivering seized Eli’s frame. He became aware of 
each noise in that hideous hubbub about his ears and of 
each hand raised against him. He saw the opened mouths 
and the teeth. He dived under the hands, the box was 
kicked from under his feet; with a whinny of terror he 
took to his heels and fled. 

He fled like a beast to its den, to the one place in the 
world where he belonged, where his mate would take him 
in and lick his wounds and soothe him with her warmth. 
He had no other consciousness saving of her and the fire 
and the kitchen and the chair beside it where his child was 
sitting. ‘They would not get him there, their hot breath 

215 


DIAY OF “ALONE M ENT. 


would not be at his neck. For hours they might thunder 
at the door, then they would grow weary, and leave them. 
Her hands would be on his brow as of old. 

Terror winged his feet. Joyfully they pelted after him. 
But there was one amongst them who, like Dovvid Pol- 
lock, had been standing at some distance apart, and knew 
a swifter way to the house in Jilk Street, for it was soon 
evident that Eli was making there, evident at least to his 
son. Reuben tore through the front-door of a house and 
out through its back-door and across an entry, and again 
through a back-door and a front-door and across a street. 
Finally he was at the back-door of his own house and in 
the kitchen where his mother stood cooking at the fire. 

“Father!” he cried. “Quick! They’re running after 
him! They want to murder him! He’s running this 
way! The front-door!” 

He had already darted through the kitchen and into the 
lobby and flung the door open. A noise of shouting ap- 
proached from beyond the corner of the street. It came 
nearer. He found himself dragged inside and the door 
shut to and bolted. 

“He shall not enter here!” his mother cried. 

“Mamma, mamma!” He wrung his hands. 

The shouting was in the street. He was a few doors 
away. He was here. 

“Let him in!’ he cried. “He is my father!” 

“He is nothing! He is dead! We know him not!” 

They heard the sound of his fists hammering at the 
door. 

“Mamma, Mamma!” he implored. He tried to pull her 
away. He tore at her skirts. He sprang at her face and 
kissed her. His face was wet with tears. Hers was dry 

216 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 
as sand. She did not move. Her heart tolled within her, 
ebbing, sickening. 

He sank down sobbing at her feet. The hammering 
grew louder for a moment, then fainter and fainter, and’ 
was still. But the shouting beyond the door persisted. 

It was the baying of hounds that had run down their 


quarry. 


2171 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


F she asked him where he had been those evenings 
when he came in late, or those Sabbath days when he 
disappeared after the meal at midday and did not re- 

turn till the last service was over, he lied. He said that 
the teacher had kept him in after hours in chayder or that 
he had been listening to the old men expounding Torah 
in the synagogue. How should he abandon his father, so 
frail and lonely, because this bad Christ had put him 
under a spell? ‘There would never again be felicity in Jilk 
Street as of old, with his father placidly or furiously turn- 
ing the leaves of his big books and his mother at the fire 
stirring the thickening mass of ingber, and himself with a 
large green apple to turn round and round in his hands. 
These days she no more remembered to keep a large green 
apple for him. She did her duties in the kitchen and the 
shop and sat down when they were over and at length rose 
to the bedroom and he followed. And it was because he 
thought she might be cold that he had risen from his own 
small bed and went over to sleep in hers, where his father 
used to be before Christ called him away. But could he 
abandon his father because of Christ? Or could he cease 
to love his mother because of God? If ever she spoke it 
was to utter God’s name. God seemed to dry her lips 
and take the light from her eyes. Who was it that had 
made this God and this Christ? Or had they never been 
made at all? 
218 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


So Reuben fared forth to Pratt Street in Longton where 
the road rises away to Weedon Park. And he would tap 
on the window-pane and Eli would come forth and take 
his son’s head gently between his hands and look into his 
eyes. He had not asked the boy a second time to come in. 
They would set out hand in hand in all weathers, pref- 
erably during rain and mist, for then there was less 
chance of meeting the folk of Begley Hill. ‘There was less 
chance that jeers and curses should follow them or that 
some fleet-foot mischief should carry the tale to a silent 
woman in Jilk Street how her son had been seen walking 
with his father, Eli the apostate. 

Upon these days Eli’s heart ached with such woeful 
perplexity that he thought now at last it must break. 
Had he the right to refrain from bringing Christ to this 
lost child? In a few months or a year would be the time 
of his bar-mitzvah, his confirmation. They would confirm 
him, the stubborn ones, in the blindness wherewith they 
had so long been blind. Dare he withhold from him the 
Sacrament, the Atonement? Must he allow his child’s 
soul to parch in those deserts where the Lamb’s blood may 
not flow? 

Or should he use what power of suasion had been 
granted him and—much more forceful than that—the 
power of the love between them, to wean him from his 
faith, from his mother already so smitten and bereaved? 

But in the dusk, in the loneliness, only one voice re- 
mained with him of all those that had cried or whispered 
that day—those that had Jjeered at him, his son who had 
walked beside him holding his hand, his wife who had 
stood like a wraith by a tomb. One voice remained, say- 
ing: “So I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: 


and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” 
219 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


And if his brethren must be strengthened, must his child 
be left to his weakness, alone and lost? 

So upon these days when they went walking together, 
he played with his son a losing hand for Christ. At first 
he introduced the name with caution, seeing the child 
wince at the mention of it, and afraid lest Reuben be 
frightened from his side, lest he no more seek his father 
out, tapping furtively at the window. Then he spoke of 
him with more courage, as the sound of the word became 
familiar between them. And then slowly he was forced to 
learn that the small lad whose hand he held, this child who 
was his son, was more impervious to his argument and to 
Christ’s name than the youths who howled most lewdly at 
the street-corners. For those others shook their fists, a 
rage came upon them. Therefore there was hope. But 
the hand of Reuben became remote and chill within his 
own, as he told the tale of the sufferings of Christ and 
what things he had said and what kingdom was promised 
those who believed he rose from the dead, being the Son 
of God. And Eli was aware how Reuben’s eyes that had 
taken some life into them when his father appeared at the 
door and they took each other’s hands and set forth, how 
his eyes became indifferent and empty. Till the child 
himself put an end to it one evening, awaking of a sudden 
from this chill stupor. 

“Father!” he said. 

“My son?” 

“Tt isn’t fair to my mother if you talk to me of this 
Christ! I am eating her bread and butter till I am old 
enough to go out and earn money so that she shan’t work 
any more and she shall have cakes!” 

“That thou shouldst have need to think these thoughts 
when I for many years should be earning money for us all, 

220 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


working till there was no skin on my hands. Shame upon 
me!” 

“It is my mother’s bread I am eating now! It isn’t 
right that I should listen to all this about Christ. Christ 
has been very cruel to my mother.” 

“That she might let him be kind!” 

“Father, when I am a man and leave school and go to 
work, then talk to me of Christ. I do not like him. I 
shall never like him. But it will be fair if I listen then. 
Father, please, father!” 

“What then?” 

“Please never speak of him again. Or how can I come 
to you?” | 

Eli said no word. They walked on in silence and came 
back into Longton again. At the corner of Pratt Street, 
the boy left him, running swiftly home to his mother, to 
the half-lit kitchen where the gas-jet must always be kept 
burning low. For gas was dear and there was little 
money to pay for it. 


221 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


HOSE voice had it been then that spoke into his 

WV ear that night of mist among the damp, unre- 

claimed coppices that fringed Weedon Park? 
Whose voice than the devil’s? How should Dovvid Pol- 
lock have known that he would be wandering under that 
far outpost of Doomington? 

“Aren’t you glad, dear Eli, that our miracle succeeded?” 

What had the voice meant? And yet it had seemed 
more than a voice, Dovvid Pollock himself, swinging his 
great shoulders away under the dripping trees. But he 
had not eaten for many hours. Days, was it? Was it 
not merely one of those same trees seeming to move, an 
illusion of the starved senses? 

If it were Dovvid Pollock in truth, and not the devil, 
how should he so infallibly have known that hour of too 
great anguish, when it seemed at length that the cross 
was too great to bear, that the moment was come either 
to discard it or to sink under its weight, crushed utterly? 
How should he have guessed? 

For what if, indeed, the miracle had been induced by 
some trickery of Dovvid Pollock’s mind triumphantly will- — 
ing the thing out of whatever demon darkness he lurked 
in, some festering pit in Doomington or some cavern in 
lone mountains at the end of Europe—what then, what 
happened then? 

He groaned aloud. “Myi:soul is exceeding sorrowful,” 
he said, “even unto death.” 

222 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


How cunning had it been of Dovvid so to plant the 
seed in his mind, the seed of expectancy; so that when 
at last the favourable moment came, the task was not 
more difficult than any telepathising trickster on the 
music-halls might have managed. 

What happened if this were the truth of it, of the 
gathering, transfixing radiance, of the blood flowing, the 
carved head that turned, the dumb lips that spoke? 

Shame on a faith that needed for its warrant a particu- 
lar dispensation, a contortion of the laws of nature. But 
had this not been the motive-power of his agonies? 
Where had he been at this moment if the blood had not 
flowed and the lips spoken? In the synagogue, threading 
the intricate labyrinths of nowhere? But when he re-— 
turned home, his child would have been at his side, his 
wife over against him, her brown eyes brimmed with 
light. 

He beat his breast. “Christ also has heard thee, my 
Lord Christ, saying: ‘All these things will I give thee, if 
thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ I will not worship 
thee!” 


All night he wandered in the spirit’s desolate places. 
Grey dawn came, less grey than the hollows under his 
eyes. 


It was evening, the time when he must go forth to 
his people, to whatever fortune awaited him there, the 
violence which he could bear even should he die of it, 
and that crying out against his Lord which he could not 
bear—even though he knew it to be made in the name 
of millennial injuries, burning towns and outraged women 
and slaughtered babes. 

223 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


But it was to no place in Longton or Begley Hill 
that he found his steps impelled that evening, not to 
the croft by the Ealing Street School nor any of the 
street-corners where his coming was a signal for them 
to leave all other tasks and to crowd about him, jeering. 
He was taking the steep downhill road from Longton to 
the region by the river where the factories were. There 
was no escaping the summons. He must go. 

Was it too late? Was Dovvid Pollock then damned 
to irretrievable perdition? What was the significance 
of his eyes, the way they were smitten and blasted, that 
evening on the croft near the school? Was it the con- 
sciousness of the sin against the Holy Ghost? Or if 
it was not too late, might some other light be spread 
abroad in his eyes, some other light than the hell-flame 
that had so long inhabited there? 

Here was the waterproof-goods warehouse over the 
River Mitchen where Dovvid Pollock kept on his room 
from season to season. Eli climbed the wooden stairs 
and paused a moment before the door of Dovvid’s room. 
“The rancid odour of waterproof pervaded the thick 
air. 

Why did Dovvid not call now? He had been calling all 
day. How often had Dovvid not anticipated any sensu- 
ous assertion of Eli’s arrival. Why did he not call? Eli 
knocked at the door. There was no reply. He waited. 
“Then he turned the handle. The door was not locked. 
‘He entered. 

The same litter of books, the confusion of canvases, the 
innumerable carved cigarette-boxes. There was a shadow 
upon them all of a dangling corpse. From a stout hook 
in the ceiling, Dovvid Pollock swung darkling. 


224 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


I 


Al ape was no escape for young Reuben from the 


sorrow that had befallen his house excepting into 

that apathy which was more mortiferous than sor- 
row itself. For sorrow was a condition in which at least — 
certain faculties, the emotions, were kept living, even if 
they lived too acutely for an organism else so torpid. 
Nothing in Doomington interested him. It was not as if 
he were troubled by ancestral instincts that fought blindly 
to be free from that pall of smoke, the high factories, the 
dingy streets; to return to those reaches of river, the 
meadows of maize, the vast forests that bounded them— 
to that landscape where for some centuries his blood 
had laboured and trafficked and been content. Neither 
any ancestral instinct nor the tales his father and mother 
more directly recounted of that country had created any 
nostalgia within him. He walked with outward eyes 
which did not see and inward which saw no more. At 
school his automatic petrifaction had now ceased to con- 
vey the impression of “goodness,” convenient though it 
was, and not to be deplored should certain of his class- 
mates attempt a partial imitation of it. His teachers had 
begun to feel that light gained in luminosity through the 
adjacence of shadow, that “goodness” could not be philo- 
sophically deemed “goodness” without a little “badness” 

225 


DYY OF \ARONEMENT 


—not too much—for the opposite quality to overcome. 
They thought Reuben stupid, and Mr. Sant, for instance, 
did not refrain from telling him so. It did not disturb 
him any more than praise once gratified him. If he 
discovered any virtue in chayder, it was that it absorbed 
most of the rest of the day. The mournful simultaneous 
chanting of thirty little boys in a small room with closed 
windows made you sleepy and you came home and had 
some black bread and some cocoa for supper and went 
to bed. Then you got up and said your prayers (you 
were, of course, always saying your prayers; it was 
neither a pleasure nor a nuisance, merely a part of being 
alive, like wearing boots). Then you went to school 
and came back and had dinner and went to chayder and 
said your prayers. Then you went to school again 
and came back and had your tea and went to chayder 
and said your prayers and came back and went to bed. 
And you were a year older. And you were another 
year older. 

Excepting this meaningless hateful battle between God 
and Christ. It meant nothing to him, it seemed to be 
about nothing at all. Who were they? What did they 
want? They had broken everything, destroyed every- 
thing, and they were not even as real as the white, sooty, 
nameless cat or Miriam the hen. What trick had they to 
compare with the cat’s standing on the kitchen window- 
sill outside in the yard and pressing down the latch with 
the right paw to let himself in? Miriam the hen, it was 
true, was not so intelligent, but she was affectionate, at 
least, in a watchful furtive manner. 

Once a herd of cows had been driven through Longton. 
Nobody knew why they came or whither they went or 
what on earth they could have been doing in Doom- 

226 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


ington at all. But the spectacle of them made Reuben 
happier than he had ever been before. It was not per- 
haps that he was happy as that a picture and a movement 
established themselves in his mind and were a focus for 
queer disjointed fancies. There must be people who 
owned cows and they looked after them and they all 
stood knee-deep together in tall grass. And there would 
be resplendent hens in those places, with feathers like 
bronze. Miriam in that company would be a sad crea- 
ture. And cats and dogs and goats. Goats with horns 
and beards. And heifers. 

But the fancy began to exhaust itself. To conceive 
the appearance of goats was too arduous a task for a mind 
so untutored in the art of imaginative self-presentation. 
And what were heifers? Only a little more than a word, 
just a little more than Christ or God. He subsided into 
torpor again, a grey world. 


Cartwright’s Curiosity Shop was in the Doomington 
Road, opposite the gaol and not far from the river. He 
had once seen his father making his way in that direction, 
and it had occurred to him that he might be useful if 
his father should meet with any trouble. It happened 
that his father was making his way to Dovvid Pollock, 
who lived not far off, and the boy determined that he 
might as well spend a few minutes outside Cartwright’s 
window as anywhere else, till his father appeared again 
and he could whisper some suggestion of time or place 
for their next meeting. 

They had found it convenient to meet there for a 
hurried moment more than once. It was on Reuben’s 
third or fourth visit to Cartwright’s shop that a yellow 
flicker of stone caught his eye behind a heap of books 

227 


DYT OFM ATNO NVECVE BANG Th 


and pewter pots and carved chess-men and fans. and 
candle-sticks. It was not stone, it was plaster, but 
Reuben did not know the difference. The object was 
thrust away behind all this motley as if Mr. Cartwright 
was half-hearted in his expectation of disposing of it. 
You could only get a clear view of it by ascending Mr. 
Cartwright’s step (under danger of incurring Mr. Cart- 
wright’s displeasure) and looking through the side-window 
along an irregular lane of more saleable goods. But when 
at last you got a clear view, what you saw was the head 
and shoulders of a man cut out (as you thought) in 
stone. 

Reuben knew it was more than a man. He knew it 
was a god; but he did not apply that word to it, partly 
because its associations were so harsh, largely because 
he knew you might speak of God in the jealous singular, 
but not in the urbane, differentiated plural. The teachers 
at the Ealing Street School had declared frequently in 
frigid accents their detestation of things called “idols.” 
He had encountered the same creatures during the transla- 
tion of the Bible in chayder, and there the abhorrence 
expressed for them was even more uncompromising. It 
was obvious that this thing was not an “idol” because 
all authorities were agreed on the detestable hideousness 
of those monsters. They had flat noses, enormous mouths 
with protruding teeth, ears that stood away from the head, 
one eye or three. It was conceivable that it was of the 
race of “graven images,” against which he remembered 
certain quite explicit decrees. But “graven images” 
seemed generally to have taken the form of a calf or a 
fish; and though the thought of a graven calf or fish, even 
when set up upon altars and worshipped, never had 
stirred his childish bosom to indignation, this thing in 

228 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


Cartwright’s window was more than either, it was more 
than a man, more than the loveliest man who had ever 
been born since the beginning of the world. 

Yet it was manlike, visible, tangible (could Mr. Cart- 
wright but divine how the tips of his fingers ached to 
pursue, how fearfully, how reverently, those smooth 
slopes under the chin and the line of the nose and the 
brows!). It had meaning. It had authority. He real- 
ized suddenly that it belonged to that order of concep- 
tion to which God and Christ also belonged. He -de- 
cided at once that it was greater than they, greater than 
calf or fish or man or Christ or God. 

He knew, though he knew it dimly, as a sensation | 
rather than a thought, and not for many years would 
he so fashion that knowledge into words—he knew that, 
firstly, it was the image of an idea; so that, should that 
particular piece of material be destroyed, the idea would 
persist invincibly. It would persist in his own head. It 
would go down to the grave with him. He knew also 
that it was in itself splendid and imperious; that the idea 
must express itself again and again and again into stone 
till there was no more world. 

These feelings came to him slowly, clarifying them- 
selves in a gradual sure dawn, during the pilgrimages he 
made to the window of Cartwright’s Curiosity Shop and 
to other more decorous shrines in later years. In the 
earlier pilgrimages it was with a sort of pained surprise 
that he noted the incomparable felicities combined into 
this piece of disregarded merchandise. It was a pained 
surprise because he obscurely felt he had been cheated 
in so much as the thing had not been brought into his 
vision before. It endowed life with meaning and im- 
portance if it could so render itself, into such a poise of 

229 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


the head, such a line of the shoulders. The hair rolled 
under and behind his ears with the magnificence of trees 
and clouds. It was waved over his brows with more 
than the majesty of the sea. A robe, fastened above the 
right shoulder, fell over the left, assured and full, like 
night. The silence of his lips was more lucid than any 
speech. The empty eye-sockets were more kingly than 
any eyes. 

Mr. Cartwright became restive. More than once he 
loomed up threateningly from behind the bead-curtain 
that separated the shop from his private chambers. It 
was like the ominous thickening of a deep-sea fish into 
a swimmer’s waters out of its deep retirements. And 
Reuben set himself to the titan task of collecting six 
halfpennies in order to buy a threepenny packet of 
Foreign Stamps, Assorted (of all dull futilities), so to 
prolong the lease of his door-step hauntings. 

Here when school and chayder between them had 
taken all colour and sound from sky and air would 
Reuben betake himself to do obeisance. Or when his 
heart was racked with misery for the dumb anguish of 
his mother, or when his cheeks burned with shame for 
some new anguish they had inflicted upon Eli, he would 
find solace, bowed before this dusty altar, its sole hiero- 
phant. Life was not hollow. It was not divided wholly 
between nothingness and woe. He spoke to no one of his 
discovery, his new strange loyalty, and to his mother 
or father least of all. How would jealous God endure it? 
Or what part could Christ play here, so doomed to thorns 
and nails? 

Only once he betrayed himself. He had on more than 
one occasion observed another boy pause and dawdle 
before Cartwright’s window. He might have been a year 

230 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


or two older or younger than himself, it was hard to 
tell, for the face seemed older than the body, and the 
eyes seemed full of years while the mouth was petulant 
as a child’s. One thing was certain. He was one of 
those clever scholarship boys the very thought of whom 
froze Reuben into complete dumbness. He wore the 
green-circled and eagle-crested cap of Doomington School. 
Yet he was not so formidable as some. He became aware 
of the other boy’s visits and was evidently curious what 
it was had attracted him. He was even a little afraid, if 
the truth were told, for he and his friends had set their 
hearts upon the acquisition of a telescope, and though 
Reuben hardly seemed likely to forestall them in the 
purchase, there was never any anticipating what sort of 
uncle the most unpromising nephew might hold in re- 
serve. The boy with the eagle-crested cap was soon re- 
assured, for Reuben by ascending the doorstep put the 
desired telescope out of his line of vision. It may, of 
course, have been a ruse, thought the scholarship boy, 
who, though not naturally suspicious, had been of late 
somewhat degraded by this lust for a telescope. Reuben 
himself put him out of his suspense. Reuben had long 
felt that there was no likelier source of information re- 
garding the name and nature of the image than the 
learned young member of Doomington School, whom he 
had more than once seen overburdened by a satchel of 
books half as large as himself. 

“Please, can you tell me,” he stammered out one. eve- 
ning (he was not certain whether he ought to say “sir” )— 
“Please, can you tell me who that is?” 

“That?” said the other. “What?” 

“That!” pointed Reuben. “Can ‘you see? It’s like 
made out of stone!” 

231 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


“Oh, I see! You mean that bust over there!” The 
voice ecpree a certain satisfaction on the part of the 
owner that he was possessed of the requisite knowledge, 
combined with a certain sentiment of relief. “Don’t you 
know who that is?” he said airily. “That’s Apollo!” 

“Who’s that, please?” 

“Apollo? He was one of the Greek gods, the god of the 
sun. I don’t suppose you’ve read Shelley about him, 
have you?” 

“Who’s Shelley?” 

“The poet!” 

“Oh ay 

“Are you coming down this way? I’ve got to be getting 
on to my homework! [I'll tell you about Shelley.” 

They moved away from the curiosity shop. 

“My name’s Massel, Philip Massel,” said the boy from 
Doomington School. ‘“What’s yours?” 

Reuben was about to reply. 

“So you don’t know Shelley?” intercepted the other. 
“He wrote a Hymn of Apollo. I think you’d like it. 
It’s one of the hard ones. How does it go now? You 
know, it’s what that Greek god is supposed to be saying 
when they had a competition, Apollo and Tmolus. Oh, 
yes, [remember. One of the verses goes like this: 


I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers 
With their ethereal colours; the Moon’s globe 
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers 
Are cinctured in my power as with a robe: 
Whatever lamps on earth e 





But Philip Massel was not destined to finish his quota- 
tion from Shelley then or at any future time, for it did 
not chance that the two boys ever met again. He heard 

232 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


his companion exclaim, “My father!” and saw him run 
from beside him to a haggard man some yards away, 
clutching at a lamp-post for support, his jaw dropping as 
if he would be sick. 

“What is with thee, father?” he heard the boy cry. 
“Art thou ill?” 

“Lo!” said the other. “I have been in Aceldama, even 
unto the potter’s field, the field of blood! Go from me! 
Go from my side!” 


It 


Reuben judged his mother must be asleep now. While 
she was still awake she lay by his side rigid as a plank, © 
as if the thoughts that surrounded her were thorns and 
if she moved, she bled. For an hour now she had been 
tossing about uneasily on the feather-bed, that same 
perinny that had accompanied her from Kravno over 
many lands. She had once been so careful to distribute 
all its feathers as evenly as silk, so that Eli might sleep 
soundly after his day’s work. Now she did not seem to 
notice if the stuffing was all packed together in two or 
three places and elsewhere there was only the bare cloth 
for covering. She had thrown her arm out along the 
pillow. Her breath came fitfully. 

She must be asleep now. It would be safe to put them 
to the test. It would be silly, he knew it would be silly. 
But he must be fair to them. He must give them their 
chance. 

Upon this evening, Shevuoth, the Feast of Weeks, had 
begun. This was the feast, the yomtov, that com- 
memorated the granting of the law upon Sinai. To- 
morrow they would read in the synagogue the passage | 


233 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


from Exodus wherein the thunderous story was told. It 
had been translated for them this afternoon in chayder. 

And it came to pass that there were thunders and light- 
nings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of 
the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that 
was in the camp trembled. 

And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because 
the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof 
ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount 
quaked greatly. 

But the boys had played “picture, blank—blank, 
picture,” with their cigarette-cards under the table, as if 
there had been no smoke upon Sinai. And the thin, 
querulous voice of the teacher had concluded the transla- 
tion and he had risen to put on his threadbare frock-coat 
and green silk hat. And in so doing, he had said, “Nu, 
kinderlach, and if any of you wishes to stay up all night 
you too shall see the heavens open up, as they opened up 
then on Mount Sinai. For on the night of Lag Beomar 
and on this night of Shevuoth also, it is granted the Jew 
that he may behold the skies part in sunder. And if any 
of you has luck, tell me when yomtov is over and I will 
give that boy a penny. Good yomtov, children, good 
yomtov. Be good boys in the synagogue to-morrow.” 

Reuben had heard a corroboration of it in the syna- 
gogue that evening. Some one had expressed his de- 
termination to stay up all night for the opening of the 
heavens, and some one else had asked how much he had 
taken up his fire insurance for and whether he had sent 
his wife to Blackpool. A few people were amused, but 
mostly they were very shocked, and thought the joke 
in the worst possible taste. Then Reb Pinchas told the 
company severely how his own brother as a young man in 


234 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


Ekaterinoslav had been smitten with a fever and in- 
stead of wrapping himself up in blankets and swathing 
his brows, neck, and chest in goose-fat as the doctor had 
recommended, he stood all night in a field waiting till the 
heavens opened, for it was the night of Lag Beomar, 
when healing came from the opened heavens to the 
pupils of Rabbi Akiba affected by the plague. And the 
heavens opened, and his brother was quit of his fever 
and never suffered from another. That was merely Lag 
Beomar. The heavens opened more augustly on the night 
of Shevuoth. Another relative of his had been cured of 
deaf-and-dumbness in the moment the heavens opened; 
a friend, whose wife had gone off to live in sin with a | 
gentile merchant, waited up for and beheld the same 
celestial phenomenon. His wife returned to him next 
morning, sobbing and wringing her hands. 

“T’scha!” exclaimed Reb Pinchas, turning round in- 
dignantly on the cynic. “And will jokes still be made 
about fire insurances?” ‘The cynic was crumpled up 
against the women’s partition. He seemed to apprehend 
that the heavens might start opening before he had got 
home safely, to deal out condign punishment to all cynics. 


Reuben climbed carefully out of bed and crept along 
the bare floor. Very slowly:he slipped back the catch 
and opened the lower half of the window. It squeaked. 
He paused fearfully. She did not awaken. Her arm 
moved palely down the pillow. He thrust his head out 
into the blackness. The lamp at the open end of Jilk 
Street had been extinguished. The sky was nothing more 
than a thinning of the darkness where the walls of the 
opposite side of Jilk Street ended and itself began. Even 
by thrusting his head quite dangerously out of the win- 


235 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


dow he did not command too large a circuit of the sky. 
But if the heavens actually opened, there was no doubt 
he would catch some segment at least of the aperture. 
He heard the big clock from Doomington gaol boom 
twelve. 

The big clock boomed one, boomed two. The heavens 
did not open. 

If they should, who would appear there? Would it be 
God, the God of the Jews? But what if his father spoke 
the truth? Might it not be Christ? 

It was acutely uncomfortable, leaning out so and clasp- 
ing the cold window-sill and twisting the head every 
few minutes up into the obstinate skies. 

If it were God, must he be a good Jew henceforth, 
such as his father had once been, and when he had finished 
school, must he spend all his time between the yeshiveh 
and the synagogue, until perhaps they made a rabbi out 
of him and he sat in a dark kitchen and waited for the 
women to bring their hens to him, were they kosher or 
not. 

The thought bowed down his head with weariness. 
He felt his chin snap against the cold sill. He rubbed 
his eyes violently. The clock boomed the half-hour. 

What if it were Christ? When at last they had wearied 
his father out, must he himself take his father’s place at 
the street-corners? How should he find courage to stand 
out against the shouts and the blows? And he did not 
love Christ. He loved neither Christ nor God. 

The clock boomed three. 

His neck was tired with vain twisting. His chin rested 
on the sill and it struck cold no longer. His leaden eye- 
lids kept dragging down across his eyes. Then a sudden 
white memory asserted itself. ‘The brows and the eyes 

236 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


and the lips. The hair waved like the sea. The proud 
neck, the robe falling. Apollo. All his faculties sprang 
into wakefulness. 

Perhaps it would be Apollo, no other than Apollo, whom 
the disparted heavens would manifest? O he must keep 
awake now. Suppose the heavens opened and Apollo 
stood there looking down in his splendour? Who else 
than himself in all Doomington would have eyes for 
Apollo? 

He looked long and alertly into the impenetrable 
heavens. They did not open. There was no sign of 
Apollo, his hair or eyes. The clock boomed again. The 
heavens paled with dawn. | 

“Perhaps,” the boy muttered, “Apollo doesn’t like to 
show himself in Doomington where God and Christ are. 
Perhaps he goes to some other country.” 

There was a first noise of carts in the streets. The 
light blew in like a chill wind. He shut the window and 
crept back into bed. His mother’s arm closed about him. 

Nu, my child,” he heard his mother say. “And did 
the heavens open and the Above One show Himself to 
thee?” 

“No, mother, there was nothing to see!” 

“Alas, alas!” she murmured. 


237 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
I 


ILK STREET was bitterly conscious of the shame cast 
J upon it by the apostasy of Eli. The women 

especially reproached themselves for not having 
scented the infection long ago. They began to remember 
certain signs and portents. For instance, they said, he 
used frequently not to kiss the mezuzah, the sacred scroll 
nailed on the door-post, as he passed in and out. It 
was not true, of course. Only once he had remitted it 
—that night when he staggered forth with the shrill taunts 
of Maggie, the fire-goyah, ringing in his ears. Even then 
his hand had risen mechanically half-way to the mezuzah, 
but it had dropped to his side again as if a flame had 
scorched it. The fertile imaginations of the women 
further invented certain lewd private saturnalia when 
Eli had been discovered in the depths of Weedon Park 
wallowing among pork chops and rashers of bacon. One 
lady swore that she had seen a purse handed over to him 
by a Christian clergyman, and that he had made the 
sign of the cross before and after receiving it. The 
younger generation of women preferred to interpret the 
matter in terms of a grand passion and were convinced 
that Eli had fallen desperately in love with his nurse, 
Mrs. Travers, a lady already not unfamiliar in Begley 
Hill. Eli’s conversion had been the price of her favours. 
The undisputed fact that Eli had been seen in conversa- 

238 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


tion with Mrs. Travers on two or three occasions, in broad 
daylight too, lent the theory all the corroboration it 
needed. 

These speculations were withheld from Leah’s ears. 
For her there was nothing but sympathy. Mrs. Levitsky 
displayed a heart of gold and, in those early days, when 
the strange sickness fell upon Leah, there would often 
have been no food at all in the house if not for Mrs. 
Levitsky’s kind ministrations. It was not the first time 
this malady had fallen upon her, but there was only one 
other person in Doomington who knew of it, and though 
Eli on the former occasion had helped to cure her, this 
time his assistance would not be asked. 

Mrs. Levitsky sprang valiantly to the attack. “Not | 
for thyself I ask that thou shouldst pull thyself together, 
but for thy child! Look, there was not too much flesh 
on his bones to begin with. Behold now, how it wastes! 
How the cheek-bones stand’ out! ‘Take no food for thy- 
self if thou desirest, but be for thy child’s sake a mother 
and a Jewess!” 

Leah would try to conquer her deadly languor, but 
once more the opiate tides would draw in on her, lapping 
about her, straining upwards to her ears. The years 
would fall withered away from her, like the petals from 
a flower. Eli and his apostasy would not be remembered, 
nor her father dead in Kravno, in his corner, under the 
book-cupboard. The secret tales that Rivkah had told 
her, the loose woman of Kravno, flooded her nostrils 
again with a sweet and evil odour. Memories would 
insinuate themselves into her torpor, of Sergei the moujik, 
the great muscles of his thighs and the hair along his 
forearm catching the light ... his lips, his lips burn- 
NOSE Aw ae 

239 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


All her soul would recoil from the insidious heat of 
his breath upon her neck. She would claw at the air, 
her eyes staring. Once the illusion was so fierce, that 
she rose from the chair and ran from him shrieking. 
Reuben sprang to her and threw his arms about her. 
She thrust him away. 

“Touch her not!” she cried. “Touch her not! Pros- 
titute that she is!” 

So had she called herself once before, returning from 
Sergei’s first kiss in the impious woods, complacently 
then, now with hideous self-reproach. 

The boy had no idea what the word meant, but he 
knew the way the coarsest women of Green Bower flung 
it at each other. He seized her by the hands with all 
his strength and held them. 

“How can you!” he stormed. “How can you! How 
can you!” 

The terror fell from her. “Thy pardon!” she moaned, 
covering her face. “Though I blacken myself, how dare 
I blacken thee, my little son, my little Jewish son?” 

He led her to the sofa and she sat down, still shudder- 
ing. It passed away, and the glazed indifference once 
more returned into her eyes. Half-an-hour passed. She 
had made no supper. The fire had gone out. 

“Mamma,” he said, “I am hungry!” She moved list- 
lessly over and started to build up the fire. She crossed 
over to the sink and filled the kettle, then placed it on 
the fender and forgot about it. Reuben by this time 
had forgotten he was hungry. They went supperless to 
bed. 

But Mrs. Levitsky was not to be outdone. She 
bustled off to Dr. Katz and had a consultation with him. 
In Jilk Street the terms Doctor and Katz were synony- 

240 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


mous. Whenever affairs were sufficiently grave and funds 
permitted it, or if affairs were still graver and funds did 
not permit it, it was always Dr. Katz who was called in. 
And even, when funds permitted it and affairs were not 
grave at all, Dr. Katz might still be called in, as an 
insurance or a luxury. For the house where Dr. Katz 
had paid a visit was assured of consideration at once 
sympathetic and envious for the rest of the day. It was 
none other than Dr. Katz who had indirectly induced 
Leah and Eli to set up the little shop in Jilk Street when 
Serra Golda had sent over her first packet of roubles. 
For Reuben, three years old at the time, had been 
seriously ill and Dr. Katz had warned them that it was all 
a question of feeding; if they were not careful it would 
all be brought on again. 

Dr. Katz brought back this decision to Leah’s mind. 
He reinforced it with a warning that the boy would 
probably develop lung-trouble, and if he were carried off, 
which he might easily be in a year or two, there would be 
no one to blame but his mother. Mrs. Levitsky further 
terrified her with the information that wholesale murder 
was not permitted so lightly in England. No doubt a 
van would be sent in from some hospital deep in the 
country to carry the boy away from her sight for ever, 
to carry all such boys away from the sight of all such 
mothers. 

Of course he would grow up a goy. Phylacteries would 
be forbidden. They would teach him to eat pig... . 

Leah sprang to her feet, an expression of the utmost 
horror on her face. Mrs. Levitsky and Dr. Katz were 
hardly out of the room, before Leah was poking the fire 
and spreading the Sabbath table-cloth, even though it was 
only a week-day. Mrs. Levitsky knew she had prevailed. 


241 


DAY OF ATONE MEW T. 


She sent in a pot of steaming lokshen soup and half a hen 
to celebrate the victory. 

It was after Leah had put Reuben safely to bed that 
she untied from her neck the talisman which Moisheh, 
the Baalshem, the Master of the Name, had placed there 
long ago in Kravno. First she took a needle and thread 
and darned the cloth that contained it where it had worn 
thin, then she washed it carefully in warm water with 
vegetable soap, then finally she made an additional 
blanket for it and replaced it about her neck. 

“Till I die,” she murmured, “over a hundred years!” 


II 


There was to be no other life for her henceforth than 
Reuben. That other was expunged. He had no name, 
nor effect. She was to devote herself to Reuben, the 
strengthening of his body and the keeping holy of her 
mind. His confirmation was not far ahead now, twelve 
days after the Day of Atonement. Then he would take 
his place at the minyon, a Jew among Jews. Mrs. Levit- 
sky had insisted that she herself would make a party 
for him in her own parlour. The blessings of the Above 
One should be upon her, a Jewess truly worthy of the 
noble Jewesses of old! ) 

And then—there would be time to think then, of his 
bride, his home, the kaddish he would utter for her when 
she was dead. She was luckier than many women; in 
one thing she was a queen even compared with Mrs. 
Levitsky, who had no son to say kaddish for her, nobody 
more than a nephew or perhaps some old man from the 
synagogue at sixpence a time. Year after year when she 

242 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


was dead he would light the candle for her that would 
burn all night. She was luckier than many women. 

Yet she knew that Reuben was not so easy a child to 
deal with as many children. Subtly, curiously, he was 
different. She could not define it, and she did not try 
to, for it was not with her conscious mind she was aware 
of the difference. Obscurely she was troubled. He 
needed something more than the other children to keep 
him in the fold, to keep him by her own side. His heart 
was not wholly with her. Whither was it wandering? 
She knew that out of his love for her he never skipped 
a passage or even a word in his praying. He never 
omitted to kiss the mezuzah. If there was a halfpenny 
in his pocket on the Friday evening he carefully put it 
aside till the Sabbath was over. But it was out of love 
for her that he did these things, not out of love for 
these things themselves. 

As she recovered from her sickness she found herself 
behaving with regard to him in a manner strange to her 
and her practice of their religion till that day. Again 
it was no matter of rational behaviour, it was instinctive, 
intuitional. It was not the awe of her religion she was 
presenting to him, though she had never felt it so mightily 
before. It was the beauty of it she strove to present. It 
was as if a deep sub-conscious voice cried out in distress 
within her: 

“My child, my child, thine eyes are straying, whither? 
Relieve me of this anxiety that begins, still faintly, to 
gnaw at my bones. Thy heart is not utterly, is it, at one 
with me, thy race, our God? Whither doth it wander 
then? Is it, can it be, the thing called beauty thou 
seekest elsewhere? O behold, behold, how bounteously 
heaped up before thine eyes!” 

243 


DAY OFMATONEMENT 


So she would endeavour to make the table-cloth for 
the supper of the Sabbath evenings even whiter than she 
had made it for her love, her pale, dear scholar, that had 
so loved and so betrayed her. She would polish the brass 
trays to look like mirrors, and the candle-sticks gleamed 
like the flame of their own candle. She knew not why 
she did these things, but knew she must do them. She 
told what loveliest legends she could recollect from her 
childhood, even those that the apostate lips had taught 
her. She talked of all the festivals in the year, declaring, 
but not once uttering the frightening alien word, what 
beauty was in them, in each moment of them. Her mind 
compassed all the year’s festivals, without order, as she 
remembered them. She told of the plants and flowers 
wherewith on the Pentecost she would make glad the 
kitchen. And what cakes she would bake, rich with sweet 
stuffing, on Purim, the Feast of Esther. And would he be 
big enough, she wondered, to help with the building of the 
succah upon the Feast of Tabernacles. For that was the 
feast whereon the wandering of the Israelites through 
the wilderness was commemorated. And lo, even here, in 
their dingy backyard in Doomington, the smell of spices 
would blow. For there would be laths of wood, perhaps 
even branches of trees, for a roof, carried from the top of 
the opposite wall to the wall above the kitchen-window. 
And though last year, and the year before that, and every 
year since Reuben had been born, there had been a succah 
to eat in, or to sleep in even, if ever the weather permitted 
it, none had been so beautiful as this year’s should be. 
For there would be straw upon the roof and grass also 
and the yellow flowers that grew in it, for Reuben must 
try and gather what green-stuff he might on the edges 
of the brick-crofts. And the roof must be so constructed 


244 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


that the wind came through and it should be the wind 
from Lebanon. And the stars should be visible and they 
should be the stars of Zion. And they must hang red 
apples down from the Joints in the roof, suspended from 
darning-wool, red apples and some bunches of grapes 
and lemons. Nor had miracles ceased to happen. Per- 
haps still another packet of roubles might come in from 
Kravno, not that anybody would dream of asking for it. 
So that they might buy their own esrog and lulabh, the 
citron and the branch of the palm-tree. They would 
themselves reverse their own immaculate citron, lifted 
from its bed of down in its odorous far-travelled box, re- 
verse it and shake the branch of palm and say the prayer. 
They would go together to the synagogue bravely, carry- | 
ing these things for all Jilk Street and Ealing Street to see. 
And even should this almost too arrogant dream not be 
realized, there was always Mrs. Levitsky’s—or was it 
not Mr. Levitsky’s:—citron and palm they had so kindly 
been promised the use of. But always their own succah, 
with the red apples and the grapes and the lemons hang- 
ing down. 

So she strove with the boy to keep him for her God. 
And it was these evenings also that Eli strove with him 
for Christ. And his father and mother he loved passion- 
ately, but God and Christ he did not love. Some days 
he was indifferent to them,-sometimes hated them. For 
they had caused much sorrow in his house. Another 
god than these claimed him for his own. 


It was upon the Feast of Passover, upon the first eve- 
ning festival, that Leah most fully and proudly urged 
her cause. It was almost as if her God were on trial 
and she declared that if none were more terrible, none 


245 


DAYTVORVALON EMEN T 


were more beautiful than He. If He showed not His 
own face, so that none beheld Him as they beheld all 
other gods, in the things He ordained was beauty, in the 
language wherewith He was praised, in the eyes of those 
that fulfilled His ordinances. 

More than this. It was almost as if she also were on 
trial, and her God this time the judge. The complex 
and protracted ceremonial of the Passover evening festival 
had hitherto been conducted for her. It had been her 
father once, and then for thirteen Passovers (or was: 
it fourteen?) her husband. Now her own woman’s 
shoulders unsupported must bear the sacred burden. She 
must prove she could bear it as honourably as they. 
Never before, down to its last detail, should it have been 
sO exquisite and so precise. 

On the evening that preceded the evening itself she 
had gone about the house with a taper, searching for 
casual pieces of leavened food that might have strayed 
into dark corners. Nothing eluded her. She moved 
from place to place like a strict priestess. Behind her 
followed Reuben, a dumb, unimpressed acolyte. But on 
this evening she was more than a priestess. She was 
queenly. She had a loose white robe about her, such as 
her father and Eli and Eli’s father had worn. The coils 
of her false hair to-night added to her a curious, exalted 
formality. Never before had that mean kitchen looked 
so royal. The brass trays and candlesticks, the burnished 
mortar and pestle, looked like the heirlooms of some 
ancient house. Still she looked girlish and her cheeks 
were flushed; yet this dignity was about her, this exalta- 
tion. 

Stage by stage they pursued the elaborate ritual, and 

246 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


all its instruments were as fine and choice as she had 
been able to make them, with long forethought and 
arduous labour and all the money she could gather to- 
gether with the most rigid self-denial. First came the 
chant called kiddush, then the washing of the hands, then 
the bitter herbs were dipped in salt water. Then 
punctiliously, as all the men of her race had always done 
and were doing at that moment, she broke the middle 
round of the three rounds of unleavened bread that lay 
before her, and hid a portion of it under the pillow against 
which she was reclining, to take it forth and eat it when 
the festival was over. 

Then came the moment for the asking of those four 
questions which evoke the whole long tale of the cap- 
tivity in Egypt and the deliverance of the Children of © 
Israel. ‘The boy had asked them before and had learned 
them anew this year in chayder. He began with the usual 
prelude: 

“Father, I will ask thee the four questions.” 

He saw a swift movement of her hand to her heart. 
Then he saw how she composed herself, but the colour 
had gone from her cheeks. 

“Mother,” he corrected himself, “I will ask thee the 
four questions. The first question is ag 

She sat lovely and regal as before, though a little paler, 
though she knew her heart was broken, though she knew 
that for her felicity should never be again, for it lay with 
him who had gone from her. She knew it was not for 
her own happiness’ sake that she sat thus at the Pass- 
over table, before the bitter herbs and the roasted’ eggs 
and the mixture of almonds and apples, wine and cin- 
namon, wherein she must dip the bitter herbs. It was 


247 





DAY OF ATONEMENT 


for the sake of God’s honour and the piety of her boy. 
Nothing in the world might be wrought for her own sake 
again. 

So they chanted together the story of that night, how 
their forefathers were slaves together and were delivered, 
how they were worshippers of idols, of the promise of 
God to Abraham that his descendants should be delivered 
out of the hands of them that oppressed them. They 
sang the exceeding kindness of God through all those dim 
centuries between the exodus and the building of the 
Temple. How should his sons not be grateful unto Him? 
Glory, glory, glory to Him in the highest! 

But it was a tale of no meaning to Reuben, though 
for his mother’s sake he sang as lustily as he might. 
What shadows were these engaged in what windy flicker- 
ings? Were not those flickerings of less account than 
the fire that was reflected upon the glass in the pictures 
and the glaze of the shoe from Brittany? Had not those 
flickerings ceased long ago, and that Temple long since 
crumbled? 

When would it all cease, this petulant recapitulation? 
But he did not show her how tired he was. He sang as 
lustily as he might. How lovely she looked in her white 
robe, and her brown eyes shining, and a faint colour, if 
no more than faint, returning into her cheeks! 

Once more now the washing of the hands, then the 
careful first eating of the unleavened bread, one piece 
to begin with broken from the round, a second piece 
broken from the fragment. 

What did it all mean, this multiplication of vain cere- 
monies? Oh, they had told him, his rebbi and the rest. 
But even as they said it, their words lost significance. 

248 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


What meaning did they keep still, after one new day 
had dawned? 

Then the bitter herbs, then the eating of bitter herbs 
and unleavened bread together, then at last the great 
supper itself! 

“Splendid!” he cried to her. “What a mother [ve 
got, the splendidest mother in Doomington!” 

She smiled back upon him. Surely there was beauty, 
there was incomparable flavour, in these halkies alone, 
these little dumplings made from unleavened bread 
ground small! Was there a prince in any principality 
who had such schmalz placed upon his table, so rich a 
fat of fowls? And when were fowl’s wings roasted more 
delicately and potatoes so cunningly baked? And he en- 
deavoured to steal from under the pillow, as he knew she 
would like him to, the piece of unleavened bread she 
had hidden there, the afikuman. And she almost allowed 
him to, but prevented him in time. “For who knows,” 
she said, “what thou wouldst have made me promise to 
give thee, hadst thou stolen it, before thou hadst given 
it me again! Perhaps a piano, perhaps the moon, yes?” 

He thought swiftly of the one thing he would have 
asked for, had his soul dared to speak. 

“Mamma, well thou knowest thou mayst not break 
thy word. Thou hast promised to give me what I desire, 
no? Here then is the aftkuman. ‘Thou, for thy part, 
shalt restore my father to me. And thou, O my sweet 
mother, dost thou not desire him even as I, more than 
all other things in the world? Say it, mother, say it! 
Dost thou not desire him more even than God?” 

But he knew she would not say it. 

And the grace after meals followed. Then followed 


249 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


more chanting and more chanting and more chanting. 
They did not eat so well every night in the year. Could 
it not be forgiven him that he was a little, just a little, 
sleepy? They had already drunken three glasses of wine. 
There was still a fourth to drink. There was no end to 
this chanting. How sleepy he was, how desperately 
sleepy. What did it all matter? To whom? 

For her sake he tried to keep his eyes open and go on 
with the interminable chanting. She knew the effort he 
was making. She tried to inspirit him with the colour 
and fervency of the prayers. But he was asleep at last 
now and she had not the heart to awaken him. 

She realized, not with her mind but in her heart’s 
blood, that all this ceremonial she had so lovingly ren- 
dered for him, to show him what beauty lay in it, it was 
all nothing to him, a weariness. He took no delight in 
the glass of wine by the edge of the table, poured out 
for Elijah. The flavour of charoseth, this immemorial 
compound of apples and almonds, wine and cinnamon, 
lay upon his tongue like stale crumbs of bread. He had 
asked with his lips what all these things meant, the bitter 
herbs, the salt water, the small bone with a little meat 
on it, all these hallowed and timeless things. But he 
had not indeed desired to know. The colour and fer- 
vency went from her voice. In a dry monotone she 
wound her way from passage to passage till the service 
was ended. 

Alone she drank the fourth glass of wine, though she 
felt it was wrong to allow it. What could she do else? 
Alone she prayed that the Temple might be rebuilt and 
Israel restored to Zion. 

She said to herself: “Poor child, is it not my own 
fault? Have I not myself let him go hungry? He has 

250 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


not recovered yet. He is weak and sleep came to him.” 

But she knew that was not the truth. What cared 
he for the rebuilding of the Temple and the return to 
Zion? 

“Wait till next year!” she cried in anguish. “For he 
will have had his bar-mitzvah then. He will know him- 
self a Jew among Jews. Take not him also!” she im- 
plored. “Not my child! Take not my child also from 
me!” 

She touched him lightly on the eyes. “To bed!’ she 
whispered. 


251 


GHAP TE RYS xah EsraN 


for Reuben would be away for some hours yet. 

The boys of his class had been taken to a lantern 
lecture somewhere. It was chilly, for the year had 
turned. The autumnal New Year of the Jewish Calendar 
was not many weeks ahead. She shivered, but she did 
not move from her chair on the left side of the fire-guard. 
There was a bucket of coke beside her, but she did not 
rise to replenish the fire. The flame had gone. Only 
embers were left now. She was lonely. 

She heard a slight noise at the door-handle. The door 
opened. She did not turn her head. Her eyes were 
fixed upon the dying embers. She heard him slowly come 
into the kitchen like a blind man. But he found his 
way to his old place at the end of the sofa, where he 
could easily reach up into the cupboard for his books 
and spread them before him on the table. 

“So thou art come?” she said. 

“YT am here!” 

“Didst thou know how lonely I was this night?” 

“This night and all the nights!” 

“This night and all the nights!’ she echoed. 

“Even as [!” 

“How shouldst thou also not be lonely, for we loved 
each other greatly!” 
“Even as now!” 


Si had not bothered to light the gas this evening, 


252 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


“Thou sayest right. Even as now! Yea, but there 
was happiness between us once!” 

“In the old days. Dost thou remember the old days?” 

“Didst thou know how, when I was a tiny girl in 
Kravno, they called me the parachod, the steamer, be- 
cause at morning and evening I cried long and loud? For 
the parachod went down the river in the morning to 
Terkass and came back in the evening, and each time it 
cried!” 

“T knew of thee before thou wert born, and after thou 
art dead I shall know!” 

“Say, didst thou love me also when we were children? 
For thou wert with the holy books all day and I was in 
the shop or walking in the fields with Henkah and the 
other maidens. Didst thou love me then?” | 

“How shall I not have loved you, night and day, dawn 
and sunset, each moment of each hour? How should I 
not love you so?” 

“I dare not turn my head towards thee!” 

“Do not turn thy head!” 

“A sweet maiden was Dinélé. I had hoped that I too 
should have had a daughter like her.” 

“Tt was otherwise decreed. ‘Thou hast not heard how 
Henkah’s marriage fared?” 

“Two girls and a boy, no harm befall them 

“Thy mother still sends the halva from Turkey? It 
reaches thee safe?” 

“A blessing upon her!” 

“When I was but six years old I said by heart a chapter 
from the Shulchan Aruch, and my mother, peace be upon 
her, went to thy mother’s to buy me halva for four 
kopecks. Iwas sick.” 

“Thou shouldst have fed on nothing but chomazikes 


253 


>? 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


for three days thereafter. For being fish it lies light on 
the stomach, and being dried there is no oil to bring the 
gall forth. Had I then been thy wife thou shouldst have 
eaten naught else.” 

“But one small dish of broad beans?” 

“That may have been. Yet a child’s handful only. 
What a rascal thou hast always been for broad beans. 
I remember how thy mother, peace be upon her, told 
me of it when they knew we were to be wed. It is 
getting colder in this room.” 

“Do not move. Let it be. Let us warm our hands 
at the spent fires.” 

“Yea, when we wandered in the meadows 

“Dost thou remember that scarlet flower among the 
stubble which was like a princess’s slipper. Thy foot, 
the foot even of thee, was larger.” 

“Sometimes we thought that the cut maize was bands 
of moujiks. How we fled into the shelter of the pine- 
woods, trembling and laughing.” 

“Then we grew sober again and told tales. How apt 
a pupil thou wert!” 

“At the knees of such a master!” 

“It might be high noon when we entered——” 

“And it seemed twilight at once.” 

“Sometimes a pigeon flapped his wings high overhead.” 

“And all his brothers crooned.” 

“And a rabbit darted out suddenly.” 

“And thou saidst it was a wolf. I was afraid.” 

“Our feet were hushed upon the pine-needles. But 
there was always a noise among the tops of the trees.” 

“Then indeed twilight came.” 

“Yea, with the setting of the sun, and the gold light 


254 


99 








DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


slanted upon the trunks and found its way between them 
and wandered in and out.” 

“And we fled, before night came, and the cold and the 
wind.” 

“But the cold came and the wind.” 

“They are about us now.” 

“Do not turn thy head.” 

“In the embers now there is neither heat nor light.” 

“Not any in the world.” 

“Is it thou that risest and goest away? Wilt thou 
not take down the Mishna and read from it? It waits 
for thee still in the cupboard over thy head. The fire 
shall be stirred up again.” 

“T burn with other fires.” 

“They have consumed thee and me.” 

“They have consumed us utterly.” 

“Is it thy fingers at the handle of the door? What? 
Why dost thou not answer me? Is it thou that walkest 
away from me, I that loved thee, thou that has loved 
me so? Why was I born or he? It is cold, I am very 
cold.” 


255 


CHAR PERS EVE NV EN 


I 


| bas hostility which Eli’s efforts to bring the Jews 


of Doomington over to Christ had always evoked, 

began to slacken. For a time he was puzzled by 
it. He tried to convince himself there was a hope at 
last that the seed he had scattered in this stubborn soil 
was germinating. Who knew? First the blade, then the 
ear; after that even the full corn in the ear? 

He knew he was deceiving himself. He felt it in the 
waning of his eloquence, for this complacency disarmed 
him. He found it more injurious than all their howling. 
He began to realize that it was the clash of his faith 
against their fury that had brought forth lightning. 

The attendances began to dwindle. A little admira- 
tion for his courage persisted, and when they came they 
looked on him curiously, nothing more. He had grown 
stale, they left him crying at the street-corners. The 
fathers and mothers did not even trouble to keep the 
small children away. These too grew weary of him. 
Only a mad old Irish woman followed him about from 
corner to corner. She thought he was proclaiming the 
injuries of her country and clapped her skinny hands. 
She wept, or, grinning, showed her three yellow teeth. 

“I am charged of Christ,” he said to himself, “and do 
not fulfil his behests. Am I not as the vessel that was 

256 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


marred of the potter? How shall I be made again an- 
other vessel, as it seems good to thee, Christ, to make 
it? How shall it be done,” he said, “for they hearken 
not to me? Once more are they falling upon that sleep 
wherein they have slept two thousand years. How must 
they be awakened? With a loud trumpet and terrible, 
louder than the ram’s horn which blows these days upon 
their festivals. Wilt Thou grant even to me, O Lord, to 


be the trumpet of their awakening?” 


II 


This was the day of days, the Day of Atonement. 
Even that day whereon the God of Israel had promised. 
to forgive His children, to cleanse them, that they might 
be clean from all their sins before the Lord. But after 
what contrition, what tears, what beating of breasts! 
After what sudden intolerable silences that fell none 
knew how upon every man and woman and child gathered 
in the synagogue, as if each for that tremendous moment 
were filled with the immediate presence of God! Then 
once more the storm of weeping broke out like a stream 
that has been checked, and, bursting its barrier, is more 
tumultuous than before. 

Now was the morning service in that small synagogue 
in Begley Hill called the Ukrainer Chevrah. No drop of 
water had moistened any parched mouth since the eve- 
ning of the previous day, nor chafed any hot brow, and 
should not till the long day was ended and the ram’s 
horn blown. It was at this hour, if they had time to at- 
tend to them, that hunger and thirst were felt most keenly. 
For as the day broadened the body would be surfeited 
of stifled airs and the soul limp in the expenditure of its 


257 


DAY OFMATONE MENT 


passion. And in the afternoon all but the most pious 
would cluster about the doorway of the synagogue or 
wander desultorily away for some minutes with the cry- 
ing in their ears. They would return and climb the dark 
stairways again, a little dazed, and take the places near 
the Ark, or by the pulpit, or against the door, according 
to their degrees. And the day’s praying would not be one 
moment remitted, and the tears would still flow, and all 
day there would be a clapping together of hands and a 
beating of breasts. 

But the most pious did not move. They did not even 
sit down all that dolorous day. As, for instance, this 
small woman with brown eyes, withdrawn from the rest, 
huddled against the partition, which shut off the women’s 
section from the main synagogue. That woman was 
Leah—pity her, and shed a tear for her!—the wife of 
the nameless, the abominable one. She had one small 
son, Reuben by name. There he is in the synagogue, 
hidden away behind the pulpit in one of the cheaper 
seats, and it has been given him for almost nothing, for 
the officers of the synagogue know his shame and his 
mother’s, and are sorry for them. 

Even those that wander farthest away from the fold 
are gathered within it to-day, and a terror is at their 
hearts. Even those who have taken gentile women to 
wife and have been ashamed to bring their sons within 
the Covenant of Abraham, even those are here. 

One only, one only, of all those that have wandered, 
is not returned to-day. 

Once and again as the service proceeds, a man must 
go forth to the Holy Ark and draw the curtain aside and 
open wide the doors. There lie the Scrolls of the Law. 
Lo, in that mothy cupboard all the thunders and light- 

258 | 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


nings that were upon Sinai are gathered together, and 
the smoke thereof that ascended as the smoke of a 
furnace. 

The thunder is in their ears, the lightnings dazzle 
their eyes, the smell of the smoke is within their 
nostrils. 

On this day is their race mighty, and in their mightiness 
are they abased. Upon this day must Atonement be 
made, even as of old. And he that stood in the pulpit 
unfolded the scroll and read from it, his voice being 
hoarse with exultation and choked with tears. 

“And ye shall have on the tenth day of this seventh 
month an holy convocation: and ye shall afflict your souls: 
ye shall not do any work therein. | 

“But ye shall offer a burnt offering unto the Lord for 
@ sweet savour; one young bullock, one ram, and seven 
lambs of the first year; they shall be unto you without 
blemish. 

“And their meat offering shall be of flour mingled with 
ou, three-tenth deals to a bullock, and two-tenth deals to 
one ram. 

“A several tenth deal for one lamb, throughout the 
seven lambs. 

“One kid of the goats... .” 

What was this noise of feet that came so rudely from 
the stairs beyond? He continued: 

“.. for a sin offering; besides the sin offering of 
Aronement;>) 9? 

What was this? What was this outcry? Who had 
thus burst in upon the reading of the most holy book, 
even upon this day, the Day of Atonement? 

He had returned, the one wanderer, who had not been 
counted among the fold this day. 


259 


DAY. OF<AT ONE M ENT, 


He thrust his way between the crowded seats. They 
recoiled from him more frightfully than if it were death 
from the plague to be touched by him. It was Eli the 
apostate. He it was who stood before the Holy Ark, 
facing his brethren gathered together to do penance on 
the Day of Atonement. 

His eyes were rimmed as with flame. His hair stuck 
wildly about his head. His clothes were coated with 
mud and thick with thorns. 

“Brothers!” he cried, “Brothers!” And the voice was 
greater than his own. “Believe it not! The day is over 
whereon the kid of the goats must be offered! And there 
is NO meaning now in the continual burnt offering, and 
the meat offering and the drink offerings! 

“Another Atonement was made for us, my brethren 
in Zion, even our own brother, Christ! Listen, I com- 
mand you, for my hours are numbered! Listen, for I 
speak in the authority of the bread of his body that he 
broke for us, and the blood that was poured out for wine! 
Even by the warrant of this Cross I speak!” 

And he drew a crucifix forth from his bosom and 
held it before their eyes as he stood there before the Ark, 
the Holy of Holies, upon this august, terrific day, the 
Day of Atonement. 

A sound of horror was heard from amongst them. It 
was not as if their throats and tongues had conspired to 
make it. The sound came from the violated arcana of 
their beings. It was a sound desolate and fearful, more 
than the wind among reeds by a pestilent river, more than 
a voice among ghosts in a field of battle. 

“Think ye I do not know what sacrilege ye hold it 
that upon this day I bring your Christ into your midst? 
How long upon this day have ye spurned him, the sole 

260 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


Atonement! Upon what other day should he be brought 
to you, that ye may hearken? 

“Slay me, slay me! Let my bones be cast to the wilder- 
ness! But I will prevail in the blood of Christ! For the 
Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my 
persecutors shall tremble, and they shall not prevail! 

“I come not upon this day to ask your graces. I come 
armed with more desperate thunder than rocked upon 
Sinai. For the veil of the Temple is rent in twain from 
the top to the bottom; and the earth doth quake and 
the rocks are rent. But ye must hear!” 

They heard no word. Their glassy eyes were fixed 
upon that sign wherein their own bodies had been broken, 
age without end, and their blood poured for wine. The- 
dogs drank it and the vessels wherefrom they drank were 
the gutters of the street. 

They heard no word. But the stilled blood was un- 
loosened. The blood pulsed in their brains like the ham- 
mers of doom. Their fingers twitched like the claws of 
beasts. The air was red as with reflected fires and spilt 
blood steaming. Their heads drew forward from their 
breasts. Their bodies strained towards the Ark that had 
been violated as never before in the annals of their race, 
strained towards the apostate, inspired and hideous, 
towards his throat, his eyes. 

Then a voice broke out resonant as the voice of God’s 
archangel. 

“Cease!” it cried, a voice sliding down cloud levels 
from the mid point of heaven. 

The man ceased, Christ’s name suspended upon his 
lips. The others turned their heads. It was Leah, the 
wife of the apostate. Rapt and towering she was—frail, 
mortal woman. 


261 


DAY OF AT ON EM BENT 


“Cease!” she cried. “Have ye forgotten yourselves? 
Have ye forgotten what day is this? Lo, is not this the 
most sacred of days, the Day of Atonement? Would ye 
touch the things wherewith ye might make fire or cook 
yourselves a meal? Would ye touch a beast of the field 
that was not clean? How then shall ye lay your fingers 
upon this uttermost impiety? How then shall not your 
fingers be fouled on this most sacred of days? Get ye 
back, I say, back to your places! Let him speak till his 
obscene tongue fall from its roots! Stuff your ears with 
your hands, men and women and children of this 
synagogue! Even so I bid you, at God’s bidding! God 
shall appoint the avenger, be not ye dismayed!” | 

They sank back into their places, man and woman 
and child. She returned to her place against the wooden 
partition. He took up once more his broken argument, 
Christ and the love of Christ, Christ and his terror. 

Man and woman and child sat hunched over their 
knees, their ears stuffed with their hands. They heard 
no word. 

“Millennial embodiment of Israel!” he cried. “Con- 
crete stubbornness!” ‘They did not move. Their faces 
were grey as tombs. 

The words on his lips faltered. His neck snapped. 
His body crumbled. He passed out amongst them, slink- 
ing like a thrashed beast. 

They had defeated him. They had defeated Christ. 


III 


Why was she so withdrawn from him all that day? 
Why did she stand so pale, so still, against the parti- 
tion and when he took her hand, why did she not look 

262 


DRAMA IN DOOMINGTON 


down towards him and hope her boy was fasting bravely? 

See how the women held themselves apart from her 
as from one upon whom God’s hand lay, making her 
terrible. 

Reuben resumed his seat again under the pulpit. How 
alone in all this tumultuous world he seemed. But the 
tumult was not so desperate as before, for a horror lay 
upon the synagogue and some were hoarse and others 
dumb. 

How alone in all the world. For these were only 
rocking ghosts. And far beyond the circuit of their 
wanderings, along the furthest opposed borders of the 
ghostly territories, his father and mother were going away 
from him, from each other, singly, into the darkness. 

And the ram’s horn was blown, and the day was 
ended. 

She prepared food and drink and bade him break his 
fast. 

“Mother, mother, why art thou not also eating?” 

“There is a duty to perform, child, child, before I eat 
again.” 

“Yom Kippur is over, mother. It is time to eat. 
There are no more duties to perform. As thou lovest 
me, mother... .” 


“Child, child!” she said. 


Reuben woke. He knew she was not by his side. He 
pushed back his leg cautiously. She was not there. 

He knew, even while he still slept, she was not there. 
How could he have lain so long sleeping? 

He thrust the feather-bed aside. It fell away from 
him heavier than lead. He rose and dressed quickly. 

The stairs creaked. The front door moaned on its 

263 


DIAN, ORS ATO Nuit MensN are 


hinges. He lifted his feet and ran swiftly, soundlessly, 
along Jilk Street and into Ealing Street and so into Begley 
Hill Road. It was late. Not many of the street-lamps 
were still burning. There was no light in any window 
anywhere. All the world was tired with the rigours of the 
Day of Atonement. There was not even a policeman 
prowling about on his beat. He did not slacken his speed. 
He was on the confines of Longton now. 

He knew where she had gone, he knew. 

This was the corner of Pratt Street. He swung round 
towards the house where his father lived. Then he 
stopped. He heard his heart beating loudly and lonelily 
in the night. There was no sound else. 

He tapped faintly and fearfully at the window as he had 
tapped many times before, but more faintly, more fear- 
fully. He heard no sound. He waited. His heart 
rocked like flotsam on miserable seas. He tapped again. 

He heard the door in the room beyond opening. Then 
steps followed, making for the door in the street. It was 
open. His mother stood there. 

“Mother!” he said. 

She descended the two steps between them. “So thou 
hast come!” she said. She took his hand. 

They walked out of Pratt Street into the Longton Road. 
She said no word. Her hand was cold. She was aloof 
from him, separate. There was a pride in her bearing 
and an exaltation. Though their hands were joined to- 
gether, not if the whole world’s width were between them 
could they have been more sundered. 

“Mother!” 

“Once more,” she said, but it did not seem in reply to 
him, or to him at all. “Once more I saw the. face. “It 
bade me. I obeyed.” 

264 


DRAMAIN DOOMINGTON 


“Mother!” he whimpered. 

She bent down to him. “Hush-a-bye, baby!” she said. 
“Hush-a-bye, baby!” 

They turned away from Begley Hill Road which led 
them along to Ealing Street and their own house. They 
turned down the Blenheim Road where the dark clay- 
crofts weltered on either side. 

“Mother, where are you going! 

“A baby shall soon know!” she said. 

There was silence as they descended. The chill of 
death was in the hand that held his hand. They turned 
round into Chester Street. One light burned there, be- 
yond a waste of clayey waters. It was the light in the 
police station. / 

They stood outside its threshold. She allowed his hand 
to fall from hers. 

“A moment!” she said. “Stand thou here!” she said. 
She placed her fingers on his eyes, and was gone. 

She climbed the steps and walked along the bright 
passage. 

She had more than the pride of a priestess or a queen. 
An avenging angel rather. 

A policeman had come out from a side room. She went 
up and said ten words to him. He stiffened. He 
stretched out his fingers before her face. Another police- 
man had appeared. The first whispered to the new-comer 
and pointed with his thumb towards the threshold and the 
night. The second policeman nodded. He advanced 
along the passage and for a moment his bulk was outlined 
massively against the light behind him. Then he de- 
scended and slipped his hand Sey) into the boy’s hand, 
He tried to lead him away. 

“My mother!” the boy shrieked suddenly. “I want my 

265 


599 


DAY OF MAT ONEM ENT 
mother! Where has my mother gone? Bring her back 
to me!” 
She was not brought back to him. He saw again 
neither her nor his father, the carpenter of Doomington 
that had gone the way of his kinsman, the carpenter of 


Galilee. 


266 


EPILOGUE IN SICILY. 






oF eg ae 


nal 





4 ee eb) Oe ; ae e bisa d Fe ‘ : h 














PRUE OG UE AING ol Cl Lry: 


neither her nor my father, the carpenter of Doom- 
ington that had gone the way of his kinsman, the 
carpenter of Galilee.” 


“Se was not brought back to me. I saw again 


So ended the tale I heard from the lips of the goat-herd 
of Sicily, Reuben, the son of Eli. I do not know him by 
any other name, and it is enough, for this is the way in 
which men of my race speak of each other. 

All that day, which was the Day of Atonement, I had 
sat facing him under the vine that was supported by chest- 
nut poles over his threshold. Now and again, but not 
often, I was aware of his children, as shapes, voices, flame- 
like and water-like presences. More often I was aware of 
his wife, even when she was not visible. As the day ad- 
vanced, there were moments when her smouldering hos- 
tility towards me broke into a red flare of anger, though 
swiftly as she looked upon his eyes and his lips again, I 
was forgotten. But the man himself was not conscious of 
her, nor of his children, nor indeed of me, his audience. 
His sole concern was with the ghosts of the dead years 
whom he thus evoked once that he might lay them beyond 
any chance of accidental or deliberate avocation for ever 
and for ever. 

Sunset was among the groves of olive and each leaf was 
burnished with bronze fires. Sunset lay upon the African 
Sea, and it was a road paved with bronze plates. 

269 


DAY OF ATONEMENT 


Twilight lingered briefly. Night was upon us as he 
uttered the last words of his tale. And even at that mo- 
ment I became aware of a shuffling of feet, an expectancy, 
of old women coughing in the draughty corners of the syn- 
agogue, of my Aunt Deborah’s black bangles tinkling, of 
the boys crowding together as the ram’s horn was brought 
forward for the blowing. Here was the liberation, all sins 
atoned for, the Day of Atonement ended. Three times 
declare ye the praise of His Kingdom; that He alone is 
the Almighty declare ye not fewer times than seven! 

Loud and shrill across land and sea, even in this place 
of olive and almond trees and the ruins of the Greek 
temples, I heard the ram’s horn blown. 

“Listen, Jew!” I cried. “Do you not hear it? The 
blast upon the ram’s horn! The Day of Atonement is 
ended!” 

He sprang to his feet. He stretched out his arms and 
threw back his head like a Greek prince. He laughed. 

“Never, never!” he cried, exulting, as one that shakes 
from his shoulders the burden of unnumbered centuries. 
“Never shall I hear the blast of the ram’s horn! Never 
have I heard it! Hark! There in the olive-groves! 
Nuzza, come, woman! Ciccio! Children! Do you not 
hear the pipe of Pan in the groves? Come with me, 
children! Come, Nuzza! Follow! The pipe of Pan in 
the groves!” 


Autumn, 1924. 


270 





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